


Suffocated

by Voglioungufo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Bromance, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, I'll try to make you cry, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Fourth Shinobi War, Protective Uchiha Sasuke, Team 7 Feels, Team Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24911548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voglioungufo/pseuds/Voglioungufo
Summary: «Hanahaki disease (花 吐 き 病): Vomiting flowers.The victim coughs up flower petals when he suffers from one-sided love. The closer you get to a blossomed flower, the closer you get to death. Apart from the exchange of feelings by the loved one, there is no known cure for this disease.»Sasuke looks up from the dusty text and looks at Sakura, her pale face and eyes swollen with tears, her cornea spotted red."There is no such thing," he says.But the heap of flowers that she gives him with a sob says otherwise.He has a stab in the chest, a pain that mixes with guilt and blocks his breath. Because he would like, but he cannot love Sakura as she wants, he cannot."Sakura ..."She shakes her head, her eyes wet. "They're not mine…"They’re from Naruto.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Obito/Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 74
Kudos: 289





	1. Yellow Tulip

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [He loves me, He loves me (not)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22186747) by [Anannua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anannua/pseuds/Anannua). 



> After reading Anannua's beautiful oneshot, I couldn't help thinking about the Hanahaki disease. It got into my head and I kept thinking about it until this idea came out. The plot is completely different, but it inspired me that in the story of Anannua Rin and Obito tried to understand who Kakashi loved, here the same happens between Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto. Then of course the implications are different.  
> Hope you like it!

« **Hanahaki disease (** **花** **吐** **き** **病** **)** : Vomiting flowers.

_The victim coughs up flower petals when he suffers from one-sided love. The closer you get to a blossomed flower, the closer you get to death. Apart from the exchange of feelings by the loved one, there is no known cure for this disease.»_

Sasuke looks up from the dusty text and looks at Sakura, her pale face and eyes swollen with tears, her cornea spotted red.

"There is no such thing," he says.

But the heap of flowers that she gives him with a sob says otherwise.

He has a stab in the chest, a pain that mixes with guilt and blocks his breath. Because he would like, but he cannot love Sakura as she wants, he cannot.

"Sakura ..."

She shakes her head, her eyes wet. "They're not mine…"

They’re from Naruto.

"Hey!"

Naruto opens his eyes and smiles, looks at Sakura's upside-down figure against the sky and lies on the emerald lawn. He makes a movement with his head that could say everything and nothing, but Sakura understands and stretches out beside him, their shoulders brushing, the hair that opens like a fan and stains the rose grass.

They remain silent for a few minutes, the heart rumbling in her ears as she wonders how to ask it. Maybe it's not the right time, a part of her doesn't want to break this peaceful silence of any spring afternoon. The silence around Naruto is so rare that it would be a crime to stop him.

But she has a mission. She has to do it, Sasuke is counting on her, she is the only one who can do it now.

"Naruto ..." she starts and immediately bites her lips with her incisors.

But now she has done the damage and Naruto buzzes with quiet mmh with his mouth closed to spur her.

With her fingers she clings to the blades of grass and she begins to tear them, in nervous and unconscious gestures.

"We two are best friends, aren't we?" Naruto opens his eyes again, but this time he moves the irises to fix her profile with a warm and affectionate light.

"Of course, dattebayo!"

She smiles, reassured by the ringing expression that leads back to their childhood, when they were clumsy genins and the only concern was that cursed fugitive cat. Sakura is happy where she is now, but those days will continue to miss her forever.

Her smile trembles as she thinks about what she has to say. The grip on the mistreated blades of grass becomes tighter and more nervous.

"And ... if we were more than best friends?"

The radiant expression fades up to frown in hesitation and regret. Naruto has nothing more to say as he apologizes with his eyes and Sakura can only intimately sigh with relief - it is not she who is killing him - that with fear - who is he?

"Do you ... is there anyone you like?" she asks, stemming the anguish to keep her voice dry.

Naruto looks at her sadly. "I don't like you, Sakura," he says.

"I know" she replies in spite of herself, then hesitates: "I mean ... in general".

Now Naruto looks at her curiously, but she can also see the hint of concern that moves between the shadows of the blue eyes. Then he shakes his head, a new smile on his lips.

Sakura knows that smile: it's the fake one she hates with all of herself.

"No, Sakura. There is nobody!"

The ringing voice is abruptly interrupted by a cough. Naruto rolls his eyes and brings a hand to his lips, the cough that shakes his whole body as he sits up. Sakura follows him in movement, alarmed and terrified. She puts her hand on his back and tries to help him in that movement, the cough seems painful. Slowly it decreases, until it becomes only small blows and muffled rales. He opens his eyes looking hesitantly at her and slowly moves his hand away from his mouth.

Sakura feels her heart fill with relief when she sees that there are no petals. With his fist closed, Naruto wipes his lips from saliva.

"Maybe I'd better go," he says, his voice still choked and his eyes shiny. He squeezes them a few times as he gets up. "Yes, I would say yes. Kakashi-sensei is waiting for me. "

Sakura tries to protest, but can't say anything. Her eyes are distracted by Naruto's clenched fist, still closed as if holding something.

"Naruto ..." calls him with his heart in his throat.

But he has already moved away, still coughing forcefully with each step, bending over himself.

"I'm fine, Sakura-chan," he promises. "I only got saliva sideways."

Her eyes fall on a purple petal, soaked with saliva, fallen on the lawn. She grabs him and the relief she felt until a few minutes ago annihilates itself in anguish.

That evening, after consulting the books, she discovers that that purple petal belongs to the _digitalis purpurea_ , commonly known as digital, and that in the language of flowers it means _lies_.

**

Naruto continues to cough petals. In secret, without telling anyone, every time a cough attack catches him, he moves away from everyone and disappears where only the gods know. Sakura feels the coughing choked from behind the doors of the palace offices and finds the crumpled camellia petals hidden in the baskets. Sometimes she can see the nuances on his lips, where the petals have pressed so hard to release their color, like a smudged lipstick in a mouth that wants to be kissed.

Naruto is many things, but he is not subtle, he is unable to hide. Especially not to her, who knows him so well. Try to be discreet, run away from her persistent questions with laughter and always have a good excuse for coughing. She never manages to stop him, to move him from the mutism in which he has barricaded himself.

"I am the best medinin on the continent."

"I know, Sakura-chan." And he smiles proudly.

"I'm the doctor on our team."

He continues to look at her smiling.

"If you have a problem ... you have to tell me!" she insists and feels on the verge of tears.

Naruto continues to smile serenely, his gaze softer and sweeter.

"Of course I would tell you, if there was a problem."

"Your cough ..."

"There is nothing wrong with me," he assures her. "Please believe me."

She believes him because she can't do otherwise. But each time he always leaves a trail of petals that Sakura carefully collects and preserves, writing down the type and meaning of each one.

There is the cyclamen for _farewell_ and _resignation_ , the red carnation for _admiration_ , the calendula for _cruelty_ and _punishment_ , the forget-me-not for _perpetual_ _faithfulness_ , the camellia of _sacrifice_ , the heather of _solitude_ , the rue for _regret_ and yarrow for _war_.

But there is a flower that recurs more than the others, with long and thin petals like the legs of spiders that seem to have been soaked in blood. Sakura does not take long to recognize them, not after all those who brought to the cemetery for Sandaime-sama, for Asuma-sensei and Neji.

They are higanbana petals.

Its specific name would be lycoris radiata, but the most common names are others: red spider lily for the atypical morphology of its petals, equinox flower since it blooms in autumn, or hurricane lily - like an Uzumaki. But there is a name for which it is much more famous, which makes her skin crawl in a macabre and terrible omen.

That's the flower _of the dead_.

The flower that, according to legend, blooms when you meet a person you are destined to never see again.

*

Sasuke is more discreet in investigating. There is a layer of persistent skepticism in his mind, which prevents him from believing the existence of that disease that seems to have come out of one of the fairy tales told by his mother. He keeps telling himself that Sakura is wrong, that those petals that she brings him every day are something else and not the feelings of their best friend who have taken root in his lungs to suffocate him.

He has to see it with his own eyes to believe it.

One night when Naruto stayed with Kakashi late and there is nobody on the streets of the village, except for patrols along the walls. Sasuke follows him at a distance, making his chakra imperceptible. Naruto takes only a few steps before leaning against a house and starting to cough so hard that he seems to be about to throw up his own heart. The sobbing echoes in the empty street like rattles of a dying man. Sasuke looks at those shoulders so strong - the shoulders of someone who has taken on all his pain - and only wants to go to his side to support him, help him. But it remains motionless in the shadows, the bones screeching to the rhythm of the cough.

He is not as surprised as he should be when he sees petals fluttering on the ground, coming straight out of his saliva-wet lips.

Hanahaki really exists and is killing Naruto.

His first suspicion is that it is Kakashi. After all, he was with him just a few minutes before being hit by that attack of floral cough. But he discards him immediately: if he was Kakashi, Sakura would have noticed. Naruto has the most expressive eyes that he knows, it would be impossible for him to hide desire in his gaze. If it were Kakashi, anyone staying in the room with them would have noticed.

But then who? Sakura stepped forward unnecessarily and Naruto has always made it clear that he doesn't love Sasuke romantically.

Sasuke continues to follow him to find out. Unlike Sakura, he knows that rather than admitting the problem, Naruto will let himself be suffocated by it.

He would like so much to be able to face Naruto, to force him to spit out the truth as he spits those petals; he would like him to stop sacrificing himself so as not to worry others. But above all, he feels a hatred under his skin that burns his veins, soothes the thought of that person who refused Naruto's love. He wants to understand who was so crazy to do it, so cruel as to let him suffocate with flowers in his lungs, only to force him to swallow those petals one by one.

Sasuke begins to be more attentive to the way Naruto relates to others, compares his smiles according to who the recipients are. But he doesn't catch anything, he doesn't find that person who makes Naruto's eyes shine with desire and love. Waiting for Suna's delegation with Kazekage also proves to be a hole in the water.

Either Naruto has become an expert dissembler, or the person he loves is not among those he usually meets.

This is how he understands.

*

"I know who is."

Sakura gasps and the medical record almost slips from her fingers. She turns and sees her teammate looking at her in an almost feverish way.

"You know ... Sasuke!" hisses in a low voice. "You can't teleport like that to the hospital."

He doesn't even listen to her, he only presses his hand on her shoulder with so much force as to make her grimace.

"I know who is, Sakura" he repeats, more incisive. "I know who he loves."

It takes a few seconds for her to understand and her green eyes open wide with wonder and surprise.

"Who?" whispers.

She is almost afraid to know the answer. She clings tightly to the medical record, as if she were a lifeline. The more seconds pass in silence the more her heart beats in her throat. Who is, that Sasuke is so reluctant to say it?

He increases the tightness on the shoulder.

"Now he is with him, come."

She should protest, because she is working and there are doctors at her addiction waiting for orders, there are patients who must be treated, shinobi who are waiting only for her to be able to get out of there. But all this pales to the point of disappearing, everything is swallowed up in the background. Her team will always be in the foreground and no matter how many others need her.

Naruto and Sasuke come first.

Sasuke doesn't wait for her to nod, with the rinnegan he travels through space taking the girl with him.

Sakura blinks when sunlight is found in the eyes. It takes a few seconds of blindness to recognize the open space in front of her. The place where they had been promoted to genin years before, the open space where the memorial monument was erected. What Kakashi waded while giving them the first lesson, what each of them still carries inside like a mantra.

Naruto is ahead of it, like many other times. Naruto often visits that place to greet his parents, she doesn't understand what is different this time.

Until he starts coughing.

Initially it is only a blow of the mouth that increases and he bends in himself, his back curved and his head bowed under those blows. Yellow petals come out of his open mouth, his hand holding his chest as if he is suffering. Sakura has recently spent enough time on botanical books to recognize the flower to which they belong.

Yellow tulip, desperate love.

The other hand remains clinging to the commemorative stone, the fingertips following a name engraved in an equally desperate caress.

Sasuke sighs disconsolate and Sakura feels her heart bleed.

_Oh no, Naruto ..._

The name he is stroking while the petals continue to vomit from his lips is that of _Uchiha Obito_.


	2. Yellow camelia

Naruto stops coughing, runs a hand over his mouth to wipe his chin from saliva and looks at the pile of tulip petals. There are so many ... more than usual.

He smiles resignedly and collapses to sit on the clearing, his hand still resting on the tombstone, at that name.

"I know you're there," he murmurs, his voice hoarse.

He does not move his eyes from the petals even when Sakura and Sasuke sit at his sides, holding him tight. Sasuke gets stuck where the prosthesis, that small place that has always been his, and Sakura leans her head against his shoulder.

"I'm fine," he murmurs to reassure them.

"You're dying" contradicts Sasuke hard.

Sakura gently picks up the petals, holds them as if they were so delicate as to crumble between her fingers.

"Since when?" she whispers.

They are so many. How long will it take for him to start coughing buds, whole flowers?

"A few months," he says lightly. "Since I understood it. You?"

"Two weeks," admits Sakura. "I saw you coughing petals in the basket."

"Oh ..." he laughs. "I had to be more careful."

Sakura clenches her fist on the petals, wrinkles them and trembles with anger. _You don't have to hide it,_ it gets stuck in her throat.

"It's all right," Naruto repeats reassuringly. "I'll get over this too, you'll see."

They remain silent for a few seconds, letting themselves be lulled by the bold declaration, by the contagious optimism that is able to transmit in a few words and for a moment they seem to forget that there is no cure.

Then Sasuke asks the question that Sakura doesn't have the courage to ask:

"Why him?"

Naruto's lips tremble in a little embarrassed laugh. He scratches his head and in movement both slide even more against him.

"It's so strange?"

Green eyes meet black ones hesitantly before murmuring:

"A little".

Naruto smiles with closed lips, sweet, in the eyes that excited expression that Sasuke has been looking for for days. It hurts that it's for a grave.

"I entered in his head," he murmurs. "I have seen, felt ... everything about him. It was obvious that it happened, ”he laughs, but grabs his hair almost in desperation. “How could this not have happened after I felt his heart so deeply? Everything ... his childhood dreams, his desires, affection, despair and resignation ... his love. " He is no longer laughing. “ _He loved so much_. And even if that love wasn't for me, I wished it was."

Sasuke looks down and remembers that moment, the tug of war where the chakras came into contact. He remembers the force that dragged him into the consciousness of the Jinchūriki of the Jūbi, as he did not want to be sucked into it while Naruto threw himself headlong, impulsive as usual, letting himself be overwhelmed by extraneous memories. But on the other hand, if he hadn't done it, he would never have gone so deep into the heart of Obito to take him by the hand and give that last definitive tug to the chakra of the Bijūs. Probably if they hadn't met like that they would never have won.

"Naruto, he killed your parents."

Sasuke doesn't feel cruel to remind him. Anything as long as there is no more emotion in his eyes, anything as long as he stops killing himself with these feelings.

"I know".

"He wanted to kill you."

"He also saved my life twice, and saved Kakashi-sensei and brought you back to me and Sakura when Kaguya split you from us," he recalls. "He would bring all the victims of the war back to life."

Sasuke remains silent, then:

"He’s dead".

Naruto's smile is sad.

"For me".

*

Sakura manages to convince him to do an ultrasound, even if she forces herself and Sasuke to swear not to tell anyone. Naruto does not want to alarm Konoha, he does not want to stir the Rokudaime when there is still much to be done for peace. There are priorities and he intends not to divert his attention from them.

The hospital room is empty, Sakura made sure that there were only three of them and nobody came to disturb them. She has started a new medical record where she can write down all of Naruto's health conditions.

There is no cure continues to peep into her mind, but she is a medi-nin, the best in Konoha, and will find the cure even at the cost of sleepless nights and too many tears.

"I'll keep you under observation," she murmurs. “We will note the frequency of your cough, when it occurs and how long it lasts. To which flowers belong the petals you vomit and how many they are. We will try to predict its deterioration and find a way to stop the growth of the roots in your lungs. "

Naruto undresses and enters the spoke machine. What appears on the screen leaves Sakura breathless.

"It's like there's a garden between your ribs," she murmurs.

Roots and tendrils are wrapped around the bronchi and bronchioles, which climb to the heart, where the roots are more robustly anchored. They wrap it and squeeze it with each beat. And the flowers ... or rather: the tender buds rolled up in themselves as in the beginning of spring are a moving sight. She can recognize some types, especially the red spider lilies, so bizarre ...

"Can't they be extracted with an operation?" asks Sasuke.

Sakura shakes her head dejectedly. "I don't know ... I've never heard anything like this."

"But is it possible?" He insists.

"I don't know" she repeats more incisively, taps on the screen. "Look at these roots, they are so wrapped up ... the lungs are delicate, they are not an organ on which one can intervene without knowing what is being done ... God, they are also in the ventricles, look. I wonder how it's possible, it's absurd! "

Sasuke observes and all he knows is that he would like to forcefully tear those damned flowers and set them on fire.

"We'll have to ... investigate," Sakura murmurs, nibbling on the thumb skin. "You can't be the only one, Naruto, someone else must ... They must have tried something."

There is no cure. There is no cure. There is no cure.

They print the image and Naruto can get out of the ultrasound machine. Even before getting dressed, he grabs it and observes curiously what love for a dead person is causing in his body.

"It's nice though," Naruto murmurs in a submissive tone.

"It's scary," Sasuke growls.

As love, Sakura thinks.

*

Naruto no longer hides it from Sakura and Sasuke. When the cough catches him and is alone with them he does not look for excuses, he does not run away. He bends over himself and coughs, vomits the flowers on the floor, on his hand while his body struggles and suffers to be able to breathe. Sakura always collects the petals and counts them, distressed to see them increase every day.

Her research in the library leads to nothing. It seems that Naruto is the only one who has been affected by that curse and when she asks Tsunade if she knows anything about Hanahaki, the teacher belittle it as a romantic legend.

But there is nothing romantic about seeing Naruto suffocate, becoming weaker and paler day after day for the flowers that suck his energies. Above all, it is so real.

Naruto continues to return to that tomb, that monument - underneath there is not even a body buried, it is only a name - assiduously, as if he did not realize the danger of his action. He continues to nourish his love every day, careless and naive.

"To heal, you only need those you love returns your love, right?"he murmurs once.

Naruto has declared his love a thousand times. But the dead don't respond.

*

Watch the soft buttery yellow floating in the water with melancholy.

Yellow camellia, nostalgia.

He smiles to himself and feels a ferrous taste as he runs his tongue over his teeth. Nostalgia for what? Of something that could have had that for a few precious moments? He shouldn't miss it so much, he knows, but he remembers that last smile and feels suffocated by the need to see him once again.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door and asks him to hurry. Naruto swallows the last remnants of cough, his throat burning and scratching for the effort to pull those petals out of the windpipe.

Camellia is a beautiful flower and for a crazy moment he thinks of keeping those petals, as he did with the first ones he spit. He kept them and brought them to the memorial monument as an offer. Then he stopped: they have become too many and his concern has been to hide them.

With regret he presses the toilet and watches the petals turn in the vortex of water, sucked into the drain.

When he leaves, he nods apologetically to the man who waits for his turn out, he quickly returns to the Hokage studio where Kakashi is ready to exploit him with the excuse of his internship - as if one of the previous Hokages has ever done an internship, dattebayo.

"What has kept you so long?" asks Rokudaime on his return.

Naruto moans to see the amount of paperwork increased in those few minutes.

"Nothing" shrugs.

"Naruto?"

He looks up and surprises the ex-sensei staring at his lips with a confused frown, inside he freezes even before he asks:

"What's on your chin?"

He runs his palm over his lips and feels something soft rubbing against his skin, looks at the hypnotized yellow petals and mentally curses himself for not checking before leaving the bathroom to have spit them all out.

"They look like ... petals?"

He genuinely laughs at Kakashi's confusion.

"The wind must have brought them," he lies.

The Rokudaime does not ask how it is possible, it is Naruto and now he has expected everything from him. Just look at the palm and a small melancholy expression is drawn on the visible part of his face.

"Ah, yellow camellia ..." he acknowledges. "It was one of Obito's favorite flowers."

Naruto feels that he cannot fight the smile and the warmth that floods his stomach sweetly, like when he drinks tea sweetened with honey. He always complains that Kakashi keeps him in his office to exploit him, but the truth is that he loves to stay with him to catch the butts of stories he leaves on Obito.

"Once," he continues enraptured by the memory, "he bought a whole bunch for Rin, but he never managed to give it to her ..."

I know, he would like to answer, because he saw those memories and felt them as if they were his. But a cough obstructs his throat and his chest is suffocated by unsustainable pressure. He closes his shoulders and brings his hands to his mouth, the annoying sensation that crawls in his trachea with violence that makes him shiver in convulsions.

"Naruto?" Kakashi asks worriedly.

"Sorry, I ..." The cough interrupts him briefly. "I'm going out, one second ..."

It doesn't give him time to reply, tearfully he drags himself down the corridor, into an empty closet, wherever he can vomit what crawls in his throat.

He enters the first available door and collapses to the ground on his knees, a cough that does not show a single sign of slowing down, even when he doubles panting. He can't catch his breath.

He feels the tears of fatigue and pain wet his face, slide on his chin with saliva. Until, finally, the petals that freeze too colorful for the pain that is shaking his body are not released from his lips.

They are so many. His hands seem to hold them just as they continue to fall from his mouth like a cascade of yellow. It seems to never end and in the end, when he looks between his palms, he is not surprised to find a camellia bud.

Oh.

The closer he gets to throwing up a full flower, the worse his condition gets, but Naruto can't find anything to worry about. There is Kurama who moves restlessly in his stomach, who releases chakras to heal him from these latest wounds, to heal his internal tissues torn by the passage of that small bud. How can something so beautiful and delicate be just as deadly? Naruto can't really think of it.

Collect the petals, count them one by one humming. They are so cute, so bright and fragrant. Rosa in winter, hums in her mind, is another way that flower is called. the bud is so soft between his fingers ...

Imagine that Obito's lips were just as soft. He presses the petals and the bud on his mouth, pretends that Obito's lips caress him, that the edge of the petals is that scar that jagged the lower lip; he hopes that desire will cloud his mind to the point of believing he is really getting a kiss. But it does not work and moans against them, he tastes the iron of his own blood on the petals and tries to imagine it.

He has so much love to give and there is no one to receive it, Obito preferred to die.

He presses the yellow petals against his mouth, imagines soft lips and red eyes of sharingan and those short white hair and arms that hold him and Naruto experiences nothing but an absolute regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most important meaning attributed to Camellia is sacrifice. It is a pledge and at the same time a commitment to face every sacrifice in the name of love. The meaning attributed to it in the language of flowers is the sense of esteem and admiration for someone. Its meaning also varies according to the color of the petals, in its yellow color it is precisely that of nostalgia.
> 
> Oh God ;__;  
> I didn't expect the first chapter to intrigue so many people, I'm really happy! I guess it's also the call of the angst.  
> Thank you very much for reading the chapter, especially the beautiful little people who commented * ^ * I hope you enjoyed this too !!  
> Maybe this Naruto behavior may seem a little OOC, but we all know that when he puts something in his head there is no common sense that makes him stop his intentions, a bit like what happened with Sasuke. Naruto always gives me that feeling of a person who throws himself into things without seat belts and without worrying that he can be dangerous for himself. Here too he let himself go to emotions without too many questions, following his heart and instinct, and continues to drown in it because he feels that love is right.  
> And also for the ObiNaru affair, which may seem very wtf? Okay, leaving out that I ship them madly, I hope it doesn't seem so absurd. After all, I inserted a little motivation in the text: what happened in Obito's mind, while fighting for the Bijū chakra, radically changed Naruto's way of perceiving him. Before Naruto hated Obito fiercely for what he was doing, with the same impetus as he hated Pain; then he comes into contact with Obito's memories and emotions and his intentions to defeat him change. There is precisely the part where their chakras are colliding and Naruto sees Rin's death and starts crying for him, to the point that even Kurama must tell him not to be influenced by what he sees / feels.  
> Obviously let alone if he listens to him and instead goes right to the bottom in Obito in their long chat, where suddenly you see that from "I will defeat you and make you pay for everything" Naruto goes to "You have to be on our side, find yourself and fight with me. " To the point that he continues to insist even when Obito puts a hand to his throat and when, at the end of the fight, Sasuke splashes to kill him Naruto tries to stop him and is relieved by Minato's intervention that stops both Sasuke and Kakashi from killing him. That yes, it's actually something that happened with Nagato, but with Nagato Naruto he didn't have the same reaction - when he sacrificed himself for Konoha he was less involved and detached than what happened with Obito.  
> Not to mention the rest, when Naruto revives him and the clash with Kaguya, when Obito sacrifices himself for him Naruto is really destroyed. Even Sasuke understands him and leaves him time for one last greeting while he takes care of keeping Kaguya busy, there is an exchange of glances between them where Sasuke spurs him on to let it go but then sees that it is important for Naruto. And when Naruto leaves, he explodes with frustration for not being able to save Obito and there is that magnificent reaction of amazement to the "thank you" he receives from Obito. Plus we add the snap of anger against the black Zetsu that is mocking Obito and he cuts it in half shouting that he finds Obito "incredibly cool". Yes, right.  
> So, yes, here it is not so absurd that he is in love with Obito, even if he is dead; __;
> 
> ... Okay, sorry for this unsolicited stream of consciousness. But I need to spread reasons why ObiNaru are beautiful and deserve an opportunity. That in this story they have no ………………… I repeat: pain.


	3. Poppy

"Why do you keep dragging yourself here."

Naruto smiles and blood is dripping from the corner of his lips. He cleans it quickly before Sakura sees it, runs his tongue over his teeth and swallows the ferrous flavor along with the petals left in his mouth.

 _Drag_.

Sakura used the right word. He staggered to the tombstone as the cough threatened to break his ribs, vertebrae, every bone in his body.

He pulls himself straight up and his back seems to creak.

"Why is he here, right?" obvious by arching the eyebrows.

But Sakura isn't looking at his face, her green eyes are focused on the memorial stone and you can see what she's thinking in her face.

Obito is not buried here. Obito is dust scattered in a dimension of green sky and red earth that only the rinnegan can reach.

What he has in front of him is only a stone full of engraved names, a sterile consolation for the living.

Yet it is so sweet the way Naruto touches it with his fingers, stroking it as if it were a face. The worship of that gesture makes Sakura feel sick, like a squeeze in the throat and a weight on the heart.

She wasn't there, she doesn't know what Naruto saw and she doesn't know what happened to make Obito radically change; she is a stranger and cannot understand how this is possible.

She just knows it's not healthy. That must stop.

But Sakura loves him and can't be like Sasuke, who doesn't let his icy heart scratch in front of Naruto's tenderness. She can't like him to take Naruto by the collar, yell at him to wake up and open his eyes, spewing out anger and frustration.

She sits next to him, a safe shoulder where she can rest. Naruto has been her anchor for so long in the toughest moments that it's the least she can do to reciprocate.

“Sometimes I guess he's not dead and I wonder… what would have happened,” Naruto murmurs softly, and Sakura holds her breath.

Until now, he has always limited himself to remaining silent, in which she pretended to be at ease. It is the first time he has spoken, that he seems to want to share a piece of his heart with her. She feels it is a precious gift, something to look after and keep safe, so fragile that it can be easily broken, and for this she does not dare to breathe.

 _What would happen…_ He would be punished for his crimes.

Reformed to the last or not, unleashing a ninja world war is not something the Kage would have let go with a shrug, not even with Kakashi-sensei's goodwill and Gaara's understanding. They had to fight with fingernails to get Sasuke out of life imprisonment when his crimes were a grain of sand in the desert of Obito's murders.

Sakura thinks about it and shudders.

"I have no idea," she says in a forcefully lively tone, in her clear mind the prison in the Land of Iron where he would be held.

Naruto has his gaze lost, behind colorful and unattainable fantasies.

“It would have been a good assist for Kakashi-sensei,” he imagines. “They would be late to any Kage meeting. He probably would have become an ANBU ”.

There is a long pause, in which he scratches the soil with his nails; it seems that the grave is being dug. The dreamy expression suddenly becomes embittered, uncertain.

"Would he have loved me?" he asks in a tremulous breath.

That hesitant tone about Naruto is unnatural. Sakura feels torn apart between the horror of seeing her best friend in that state, the frustration of her stubbornness in letting himself be killed and the desperate need to reassure him.

"Of course" the latter wins, because she really believes it.

She remembers how he was looking at him in the dimension of the kamui, while giving him back Kurama's chakra. She didn't understand what it was and still she can't be sure it was what Naruto wants now, but it was something.

Sakura, what are you doing ...

It's the voice of her conscience, as cold as Sasuke's, scolding her for playing with fire. She doesn't have to feed Naruto's fantasies.

"So ..." she starts looking desperately for a hold to take him away from there. “I'm kind of hungry. Ramen?"

Ramen has always worked. It has to work.

She feels excruciating relief to see Naruto nod. It means that somewhere inside that pale ghost there is still her best friend, who has not allowed himself to be devoured to the bone by those harmful feelings.

"This is the first time you accept a ramen just the two of us together" he shouts cheerful.

The melancholy of just before seems to be swept away and therefore Sakura allows herself to frown and give him a pat on the head, in the reproduction of the old patterns of their childhood.

"It's not a date" she scolds him

Naruto laughs and massages the injured spot. It's easy to ignore dark circles and cough-chapped lips for a moment.

"So I won't have to offer you anything!" reply with a tongue.

"You're not a gentleman at all, you know?"

"It's not a date" he mocks her before running away from a new playful but still lethal punch.

Naruto lands lightly from the branch, as if he has no weight. Crouching he watches the distant backs of Sakura and her kage bushin as they leave the training ground. He smiles bitterly and asks for forgiveness with his eyes.

Sakura will apologize for replacing himself with a clone while not looking.

He feels a pang of guilt, he knows he is behaving badly and that he shouldn't, that this behavior should be foreign to him. He is not the character of the tragedy who pushes everyone away, hides himself and commits himself in his own sadness. This is not the way he decided to be, the way he was described in the novel that gave him his name. That's not how Naruto is supposed to be.

But he feels very tired, with his breath rasping in the lungs blocked by the flowers, the energy sucked by the roots to create brilliant and wonderful petals. He feels so tired that even that kage bushin drains his energy.

He apologizes to Sakura, but remains there on the grass looking at the grave and basking in regret.

 _I had to save him_.

He did not succeed. Even if he died smiling at him, he can only feel defeated and bitter with destiny. The truth is that Obito wanted to die and this hurts as much as the roots that crush his heart.

He preferred death to him.

_Sometimes I guess he's not dead ..._

He wasn't being honest with Sakura. Because he doesn't imagine Obito helping Kakashi, losing track of time and arriving late for important meetings with outlandish excuses. Imagine another kind of everyday life, more intimate and private, made of _welcome back home_ and caresses, panting breaths, mouths wandering over the body and hot shivers. He has imagined kissing him so many times that he thinks he knows the taste of his lips. If he closes his eyes, he can hear them even now.

Imagine his hands pulling the zip down slowly, warm fingers drawing paths on his belly and lips biting his neck, wiry hair tickling his chin and making him smile.

He can feel a hot body pressing on his, squeezing and squeezing him until his breath stops in his lungs and makes him gasp.

And he starts coughing.

His eyes widen and his throat burns. He rolls to the side and gets on all fours as he feels suffocated by the gagging that tears at his delicate inner walls. Tears cloud his vision as the first petal - red as blood - flutters from his mouth. Others crawl down their throats as they try to reject them, free their lungs and heart.

The sweetness of the flowers mixes with the iron of the blood and is such a revolting taste that it triggers continuous waves of nausea and coughing. For a moment he fears he will never stop and therefore continues to cough even when the throat is finally free, when he no longer chews petals and oxygen can return to circulate in the veins. He collapses coughing from a spontaneous reflex and barely observes, with tired and half-closed eyes, the numerous half-closed buds next to her face.

Poppies.

They also make the blood sweet, a narcotic scent that slowly accompanies Naruto into unconsciousness.

*

It is night when Sai appears on the balcony of his window, the ANBU mask moved to the side and the pose curled up. In another situation Sakura would scold him, complaining about not having knocked on the door. But in another situation, Naruto doesn't hold up to examine him in his arms, with blood on his lips and unnaturally pale skin.

For a moment Sakura is not breathing.

For a moment, which lasts until her fingers run to her wrist, she fears she has lost him. But then she feels the flow of blood beating through his veins, following the slow, fatigued rhythm of his heart. She notices the rasping breath that comes out of the half-open mouth and widens the rib cage.

"He just passed out," Sai says, hiding the concern behind an apathetic tone. "I found him in front of the Monument. I preferred to take it to you immediately ”.

Sakura can only bless Sai's analytical mind. He does not know what is happening to Naruto, yet he immediately understood that the more rational choice was to leave him immediately in her care than in the hospital.

She guides him until he lies on the kitchen table, slips a pillow under his neck and turns on all the lights. The pale olive of his face highlights the blue dark circles, the lips red with dried blood. Without hesitation she opens his jacket and lifts the mesh shirt, revealing his trained and flat torso. There are no visible wounds, nothing that can suggest what is destroying him inside his body.

She closes her eyes for a brief second, gathers the necessary concentration by focusing on the flow of her chakra and cancels the silent presence of Sai at her side. She raises her hands and as she touches the tight skin of her chest they glow green, the chakra visible to the naked eye as she probes internal injuries.

She can feel something alive and foreign growing within him.

She bites her cheek until she feels the taste of blood, the small self-inflicted pain that helps keep her clear. She cannot let worry make her hands tremble, she must remain firm and precise as she heals the lacerations that the petals have caused in their passage.

It takes her longer than expected, consumes a lot more chakra than expected - the flowers seem to feed on it - and when a dizziness ends it forces her to sit down. Sai is still there, stiff as a toy soldier by his side all the time.

"What is wrong with him?" he asks.

Sakura remembers the promise and a thorn sticks in her throat.

"A bad cough".

It's not a lie, but it's not the whole truth.

“Why doesn't the Kyūbi heal him? I thought he couldn't get sick ”.

“It's a peculiar cough. But he'll be fine. ”She only says it because she needs to believe it in order not to go crazy. "Thanks for bringing him here."

Sai nods. He starts to go out again and resume his watch over the village, but when he is on the windowsill he stops with a thought. He turns to look at her again, but this time he's holding something in his hand.

A red bud.

"I know it's weird," he begins and his voice seems to hesitate in confusion, "but next to him I found this and many petals." He pauses, a little twitch of the lips. “They are stained with blood. Do you know if it means anything? "

Sakura takes the poppy, it's all crumpled and falls apart between her fingers.

"No" lies softly.

*

Sakura doesn't sleep that night. She moves Naruto into her bedroom and wipes the blood off his mouth with a cloth, then stays in the kitchen where she prepares a jug of coffee. She sits at the kitchen table, squeezes the hot cup and stares at the absent bud.

The more you throw up full flowers the closer you are to death.

There is no cure.

But there must be. It can't end like this, not after everything they've been through, not after surviving a goddess.

She refuses to believe Naruto can end up like this.

Her head lolls towards sleep when a sudden tingling of chakra makes her flinch. With her heart in her throat and the instinct that pushes her to the defense, she sets her sights on the corner of the house. In the dark he glimpses the figure of Sasuke, the purple of the rinnegan that sparkles in the dim light.

She gets up so fast that her chair falls and she can't help but look accusingly.

"Where have you been?!" growls.

She hasn't seen him for days, Kakashi had only told her that he had taken a permit to leave the Village for a few days. At that moment she had hated him, incredulous that he had abandoned her to face that tragedy alone. Scared that he wanted to run away from them once again, let Naruto die.

Do nothing.

Sasuke reaches out of the travel cloak and places a thick roll on the table with a dull tap.

"From Orochimaru".

The name makes her shiver, but this time she doesn't squint and she doesn't blame him for getting close to that slimy snake again. This time she looks at that scroll with a hope she dares not have.

"Orochimaru studied hanahaki," Sasuke says. "These are all the data he has collected, including the cure."

She snaps her hand to grab it, opens it almost tearing it open while her feverish eyes read the contents.

Then she laughs, but at the same time she wants to cry.

This is the cure, but ...

She laughs and sobs as she looks at him desperately.

"Naruto will never accept".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The symbolism of the poppy is very rich.  
> Due to Greek mythology it is considered the flower of consolation, because it is linked to the figure of Demeter (the goddess of the fields and the harvest). In fact, it is said that after the loss of her daughter Persephone, the goddess consoled herself only by drinking opium infusions.  
> Also due to its link with opium, the poppy is associated with oblivion, the sleep of the senses and the heart and dreams / imagination. In fact, it is not uncommon for the god of dreams Morpheus to be represented lying in fields of poppies or with bunches of these flowers on his lap.  
> During the Middle Ages, the poppy was instead associated, due to its color, with the sacrifice of Christ and his death, for this reason it is often depicted in frescoes in churches dating back to medieval times.  
> While during the two World Wars it was customary to associate the poppy with soldiers / partisans who died in battle for the homeland, so we can say to war martyrs.  
> This flower was also a symbol of fidelity, as an ancient belief has it that, if you put a red poppy petal in the palm of your hand, if you hit it with a fist you hear a snap, then it means that your loved one is faithful.  
> Finally, in its red color, it is associated with the image of influential and powerful men. This tradition dates back to a legend linked to the image of Tarquinius the superb, one of the 7 kings of Rome, who, in order to teach his son the best method with which to take possession of the city of Gibo, had the highest-stemmed poppies cut down to demonstrate that the highest ranking people and the most important and powerful offices had to be killed first in order to reach the goal.
> 
> The poppy can have other meanings too, but these are the ones I wanted to mean for this chapter and the story in general.  
> The consolation is because that funeral monument with an engraved name is the only consolation Naruto has to feel close to Obito.  
> The sacrifice of Christ in this case is the sacrifice that Obito made, the choice to die to save Naruto (and the shinobi world therefore) (not counting all his delusions where he considers himself the peace-bringing Messiah lol). So always for his death (indeed, both deaths) in the battlefield to protect his comrades is linked to the flower of the partisans.  
> Obito has also been an influential and powerful figure who has played a decisive role in the last fifteen political years of the shinobi world.  
> While fidelity concerns Naruto, who continues to love him undeterred and does not even consider the idea of stopping it.  
> And then there is the most important meaning for this chapter, the one that caused the cough attack. That is, his being linked to the god of dreams and oblivion, since in this chapter Naruto lets himself be lulled by the illusion of what could have been.
> 
> As you may have guessed, poppy is my favorite flower hahahaha  
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter ^^  
> I send you a kiss for the reviews left, you are so cute!


	4. Forget me not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Orochimaru's research on the hanahaki" replies Sasuke coldly. "Inside here is everything he discovered, including a cure".  
> As soon as he says it, he feels his heart skip a beat and a gush of relief gushes throughout his body, mixing with incredulity and hope. There is a cure, it will not die. But then he sees that he is the only one who is smiling, that Sakura cannot look him in the eye and Sasuke has an expression of fatal determination, as if he is preparing to fight.  
> "But?" guess.

Naruto is a little surprised to wake up in Sakura's room, but it doesn't take him much to understand how it happened.

_Shit._

He sits up on the bed and hesitates a few seconds, bites his lip while Kurama confirms his suspicion.

**_Root's guy found you passed out and took you to the Strawberry._ **

For once he doesn't comment on the nickname he calls Sakura, concentrated in the implications.

Do Sai knows? Does Sakura know that he has started coughing up buds?

Wary extends the perception into the house, until it meets not only Sakura's chakra, but also Sasuke's.

He is not ready to face them, but he has to. As he perceived them, they too must have noticed that he is awake. All he can do is smile, convince them and release.

_I can do it._

He gets out of bed, shivering as he feels the sole of his bare foot making contact with the cold floor. Enter the main room with a sleepy smile, an expression carefully wrinkled in amazement to divert their attention.

"Was there a party I don't remember?" greets seeing the two friends.

But obviously these tricks of him stopped working with Sakura and Sasuke.

"Sit down," Sasuke says dryly.

"Good morning to you too" he hums obeying. "Also this morning when you woke up did you stick your usual stick deep into your ass?"

He waits for Sakura to catch him in exasperation, or for Sasuke himself to react bitingly, but neither of them does. Bad sign.

The nervousness begins to tingle in his body and he almost has the urge to steal the cup Sakura holds in her hands to play with, alternatively he begins to drum his fingers on the wooden table.

"No party then ..." he comments distractedly to the tense atmosphere.

He's about to say the first stupid thing that comes to mind, anything that makes Sakura and Sasuke react like they should, but a scroll is pushed towards him. The broken seal is not that of Konoha, but of Oto. Seeing him Naruto stiffens and his every attempt to joke evaporates from his mind.

"What's this?" hisses wary, unable to trust anything related to the slimy sannin.

"Orochimaru's research on the hanahaki" replies Sasuke coldly. "Inside here is everything he discovered, including a cure".

As soon as he says it, he feels his heart skip a beat and a gush of relief gushes throughout his body, mixing with incredulity and hope. There is a cure, it will not die. But then he sees that he is the only one who is smiling, that Sakura cannot look him in the eye and Sasuke has an expression of fatal determination, as if he is preparing to fight.

"But?" guess.

There is a hesitation in which Sakura and Sasuke look at each other, reluctant to break the news. In the end, Sakura is speaking.

“Flowers can be surgically cut so that they don't grow any more,” she explains, “and it's a very delicate process with a very high failure rate, especially if done by an inexperienced hand. Apparently Orochimaru has operated on it many times in his research and he certainly knows a lot more than me, so ... "

"So he'd better do it," Naruto guesses, hardening his jaw.

He struggles to swallow and says he is reasonable, although the idea of ending up under Orochimaru's knife disgusts and frightens him at the same time he realizes for himself that it is the most reasonable thing.

"Okay," he tries to say.

But the look Sakura gives him is not reassuring.

"There's another thing" she admits subtly. "Removing the flowers from the ventricles has ... a side effect" she swallows and stops.

Naruto looks at her and waits for her to continue, but she doesn't.

"What, Sakura?"

He didn't want to growl, but that's what happened, and Sakura winces. Not responding.

“Losing the memories concerning the loved one and the ability to love”.

It is wrong for Sasuke to say it, in that unnaturally cold voice of his and discordant with what it means. But it's at the same time so clear that Naruto can't even pretend he misunderstood.

_Losing memories about your loved one and the ability to love_.

"No" he declares.

His voice is as firm as his gaze, his dark blue eyes are threatening and determined, his eyebrows folded in an expression of challenge, the one he wore every time in front of the most stubborn enemy. He gets up smoothly from his chair, determined to leave and not indulge that madness.

"Naruto ..." Sakura calls him, but Sasuke is quicker to follow him.

"No?" repeats. "How would you say no?"

"It means I don't want to!" he explains raising his voice, challenging him with the gestures of his body. "You can't really believe that I accept this."

"You have no other choice!"

"There is always another choice" he contradicts him. "You can't ask me to give up love, _his memories_!"

Saying it out loud is terrible. It causes a jolt throughout his body, a shock to the brain, and his hands tremble. To forget… not being able to feel these overwhelming emotions anymore… _Not being able to love anymore_ … it can't happen. Don't they realize what they're asking of him?

He puts a hand to his chest, the familiar sensation of a panic attack prodding between his ribs, blocking his breath. Forget Obito: no, never. He can't do it.

Memories are all he has left of Obito.

All he has left is that “ _Thank you, Naruto_ ” that he repeats every night in his mind before going to sleep, that tone of sweet gratitude and hope that lulls him to sleep. That look ... right before his crumble to dust, the look of a person finally at peace, who has found trust in him and relies on unshakable faith ... a look so full of the kind of love and recognition that Naruto has begged for all his life.

They are asking him to forget it.

The cough explodes as he tries to suck in the air. He suddenly feels his throat full and blocked by something desperate to get out.

He rolls his eyes and folds in on himself, everything around him is silenced while only the endless cough rumbles in his ears. Blue petals spit out of her mouth, petals so small they look like confetti… With each cough they come out of her gaping mouth and fly to the floor.

But there is something so big that crawls up the trachea that he almost faints, which hurts him terribly. He sticks his fingers down his throat, as far as he can go and resists the gag reflex as he finally manages to grab something long and thin. It scratches his tender, slippery skin, but struggles to get it all out. With a last cough, he frees his throat from a long stem full of small crumpled flowers.

He leans against the wall, his eyes turned to the palm of his hand and still strange to the world around him. A long whistle fills his eardrums, as if after an explosion. He just notices that tears of fatigue and pain have started to slide down his cheeks. Look what he spat. The little flowers have the same desperate blue as his irises.

_Do not forget me._

_Never._

_Never, never, never._

"Naruto!"

Hearing comes back suddenly.

There is Sakura who looks in horror at the herbaceous and the little flowers, complete, and the blood that stains their little petals, dripping from Naruto's lips as he tries to breathe as if he is afraid he will not be able to do it anymore at any moment.

He doesn't quite know what to do, still dazed, and his throat burns too much to try to speak. He can only reach out with the stick, hope he understands his heart's desperate plea, _don't forget him_ , lest they make him do something so horrible.

But Sakura looks at him as if he's handing out a contagious curse. He had hoped that at least she would understand him, but he was wrong and realizing it makes him feel just like when he was a child.

Sasuke doesn't say anything, just looks at him full of judgmental silence, but his hands shake when he crouches on the ground. He sees him grabbing a handful of petals, with sharp and destructive anger; he crunches them between his fingers without any care and Naruto wants to scream at him to be careful, that those petals are fragile… that he doesn't deserve his feelings to be grasped with such contempt.

But he can't say anything like that, because Sasuke throws them at him with force and scar. He feels them hit him in the face, fall into his hair and clothes.

"Don't you see what you are doing?" Sasuke exclaims furiously, his oil eyes that seem to want to burn with amaterasu on every single petal.

_I'm loving_ , it burns in his throat but he still can't speak.

"You're killing yourself!" corrects Sasuke as if to read his mind. “And do you have the courage to refuse? You will do the operation! "

"You don't tell me what to do," he replies hoarsely, his voice scratching his throat overused.

"But yes, because apparently you are too stupid to decide on your own," he replies with growing anger. "You're killing yourself!"

"It won't happen, I ..." He takes a breath, fatigued, but more and more confident in his voice. He raises his eyes and the forget-me-not blue itself hits him with determination. "This is none of your business, stay out of it."

Sasuke can't see anymore. The rush of anger hits his throat and clouds his vision.

"So you can chase me for years all over the fucking continent to tell me what to do, meddling in my business, while I can't try to save you from your idiocy ?!"

Naruto's gaze flickers with anger. “I'm not a nukenin,” he growls. “I'm not betraying my comrades, my friends, my village to destroy the world”.

"Yeah, that's what Obito did."

Shoot before he can even decide. But Sasuke waits for him while he is still weakened by the cough, by the flowers feeding on all his energy to thrive. He gets blocked and they are face to face, giving each other fiery and defiant looks like when they were genin frustrated with the world and their only way of understanding each other was to spit hate and poison.

"That's what _you_ did," Naruto reminds him. "You should just keep quiet, you have ..."

"Don't you dare blame me for what I did," he threatens. "We're talking about you now!"

"I'd rather die than stop loving!"

"If you really want to die, then I'll be happy to satisfy you!"

Their ninja senses make them act before they even know it. They stop yanking by their collars and crouch quickly on the floor, just in time for a _chair_ to fly over their heads and hit the window with such force that it shatters the glass and makes everything fall.

With wide eyes they turn to Sakura. Her posture is still tense in the movement of the launch, her green eyes lit with an unshakable light and her pink helmet swollen with the electricity of the chakra that she is continuing to slide through her body.

When she takes the first step towards them they both have the instinct to back away. But Sakura quickly grabs Naruto and nails him to the wall, her eyes contracted and an expression capable of making even Kaguya recoil herself.

"Do you really think you can die?" hisses. "That even if we let you do it, you can do it without consequences?"

She doesn't even give him time to retort that she starts listing:

“Jiraiya. Your father and your mother. Nagato and Konan. Neji and all the other shinobi who died for you. And not only them: also Tsunade, the Kage, the Bijū, Kakashi ... you made a promise to each of them. You promised that you would change the world and create peace. You also promised Obito! Do you want tocome back on your own words?"

Naruto slides along the wall, his gaze pleading. Sakura lets him go.

"No" he murmurs sitting on the ground.

_Never._

"And how can you keep your promise if you die?"

He looks at her and she realizes it's the first time he's looking at her with that silent plea for help screaming into her body. For the first time, he doesn't have a solution and doesn't know how.

_Please, please help me._

"I don't want to forget him" and he feels on the verge of tears. “I don't want to stop loving”.

Sakura's unshakable expression slowly shatters into cracks that reveal all the fear and sweetness she is trying to hold in her armor. She kneels beside him, takes his hand and squeezes tightly to make him feel his tangible presence, true and alive.

Not dead, absent, ghost. Not what he wants _._

“It won't happen, I promise you. You will love again ”.

It's her turn to make an impossible promise and she doesn't regret it. For Naruto, for the three of them, anything can - must - succeed.

Naruto returns the squeeze.

"How?"

Sasuke looks at them reluctantly, still revolted by what they screamed at and the guilt that has surfaced. But then he joins them on the floor, a uniform black spot to their bright colors, and they both make room for him. They hold Naruto tight with their bodies, preventing him from falling apart on the ground, trying to be the support he needs.

"We will only take out the roots in the lungs" Sasuke murmurs the answer

Naruto looks at him in fear and realizes that he can't blame his instinctive terror.

“The flowers in the ventricles are the original seeds, where the first roots were formed. It is in the ventricles that the principle of the disease is found. It is written in the notes ". Point to the parchment. “It is only by plucking the roots in the ventricles that the disease stops. But if we only remove those in the lungs… You will not stop loving ”.

"But it won't stop the disease," Sakura whispers.

“No, it would just slow it down” he confirms.

"It would give us time though," Naruto dares, "time to find another solution".

There is a little silence, in which everyone wonders if there really is another solution. Until a few hours before they didn't think there was even a solution, so they would defy fate too much. And how long could they go on cutting only the roots in the lungs before that too is not enough?

"It's the only thing we can do," Sakura says uncertainly.

It is the only thing they can do. Together.

*

The transfer to Orochimaru's lair was swift and covert. Nobody has to know why they are there, what they will do. Especially now Naruto's secret must be kept and Sakura can't help but wonder in anguish if they are making the right choice in putting themselves in Orochimaru's hands.

The fear she felt that day in the Forest of Death is still etched in her bones, arcane as her survival instinct, and when she sees that pale, snake-eyed man with the crawling smile - one who knows he has all the cards to win - can only shiver with disgust.

Naruto anesthetized on the operating table, with the white lights highlighting the dark circles and the gaunt cheeks, making her believe she is inside her personal nightmare.

"Let's get started" smiles Orochimaru.

Before his pale, spider-legged fingers brush against his tools, the edge of a blade is pressed lightly to the nape of his neck.

Yellow eyes look ironic at the glacial ones of the former pupil.

"Do something shady and I'll behead you" vibrates Sasuke's serious voice, his grip firm on kusanagi.

There is the threat, but there is also fear and protection towards the partner.

Orochimaru broadens his smile.

"Let's start" he repeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forget-me-not is a beautiful blue flower that grows in spring and blossoms on a plant that is called "the grass of love".  
> It is a flower that has been named since ancient times in the testimonies of Pliny the Elder, which makes it a symbol of salvation from everything that can sadden or grieve since, in ancient times, it was considered sacred. Also with it was obtained a potion capable of healing the eyes. From this information, which has come down to us from the Greek-Roman tradition, we can understand how the virtue of benefiting the eyes and the problems related to the sight of Forget-me-not has already been interpreted, in antiquity, from an allegorical point of view. In fact, if it can heal the eyes of the body, it can also heal those of the soul.  
> Traditionally it is said that the name of this flower comes from a romantic Germanic legend. Two young lovers were walking on the banks of the Danube when they found a multitude of blue flowers. The boy began to collect them and combine them into bunches to give to his beloved. But while he was intent on choosing the most beautiful flowers, he slipped and fell into the water. Realizing that soon the current would engulf him and that he would drown, the young man threw the bunch he still held in his hand towards his beloved, shouting: "Forget me not!". The flower thus became the symbol of eternal love that overcomes even death.  
> The poet Novalis also made him the symbol of romanticism, representing desire, love and the metaphysical effort to approach the infinite and the unattainable, typical traits of the romantic current.  
> In this chapter it is obviously taken in its literal sense, of Naruto's desire not to forget the loved one, and therefore as eternal love that overcomes even death but at the same time his effort to approach something that is unattainable.
> 
> Forget-me-not is also one of my favorite flowers, especially because of its blue color and the shape of its petals so delicate. It was immediately one of the flowers that I had decided for this story ... and I think this is my favorite chapter xD I must tell you, I like to see team 7 arguing and then getting back together>. <  
> I hope you enjoyed it too and that the story continues to excite you. We are now halfway through!  
> Thank you for following the story, above all I thank the beautiful little people who left a review <3 I hug you and gift cookies.


	5. White clovers

Naruto did not remember it was so easy to breathe: feeling the air go down the trachea, filling the lungs and revitalizing the blood throughout his body. He doesn't feel obstructions, flowers that block him and prod his flesh, it's as easy as ... well, it's as easy as _breathing_.

Just outside Orochimaru's dismal hiding place, where the Alliance has locked him up with the illusion of keeping him prisoner and under control, the first thing he does is climb to the top of the tallest tree. The fragrance of the woods - the leaves, the wind, the resin - hit him in the face like a hymn to life and he finds himself smiling, breathing harder and feeling that he is not going to die.

He's not going to die.

Uzumaki Naruto has stolen death once again.

And he is loving. He viscerally loves to feel alive, to be able to breathe and be stunned with the scents of nature that surrounds him. He loves to think of Obito right now without feeling his breath catch in his lungs, without oxygen being prevented from reaching his blood.

He is so beautiful that he laughs. He also laughs when Sakura and Sasuke join him on the top of the tree. He feels he loves them too and will never stop doing it.

Sakura laughs back and scrubs his hair.

Sasuke looks at the bottom of the woods, even if he doesn't see the entrance to the hideout. The laughter of his companions hurts him, because he thinks back to Orochimaru's last malicious words.

"You will not be able to abuse it forever, the hanahaki will react".

*

For some time, they have the illusion that the storm has passed.

Naruto can think freely of Obito, he can go to his grave and even talk about him without his throat being filled with petals. Naruto loves and does not choke.

It almost gives the illusion that everything was just a bad dream, something they only imagined. After all, it's such a strange, absurd disease that Sasuke wonders how they could have believed it.

Naruto is fine. Everything is alright.

Until the flowers come back.

Until a cough shakes his throat, right after Kakashi mentions something about Obito. Sasuke is horrified when Naruto keeps his hand pressed to his mouth, his eyes wide with awareness, and mumbles some apology before running out of the room.

He and Sakura follow him, of course, and find him in an empty archive room, with a puddle of petals on the floor. He continues to cough hard, as he hasn't done for a long time, the large yellow petals of a sunflower force themselves out of his throat.

 _Devotional love._ Obsessive _love_.

Another meaning of the sunflower is cheerfulness and sunshine, all that Naruto should represent. But right now those yellow petals, too bright, are just a reminder of death.

They haven't stopped Hanahaki.

They just slowed it down.

*

They return to Orochimaru.

In a continuous cycle Naruto performs the operation, he manages to breathe for some time, but then the flowers return and each time they are more and more aggressive.

Sakura is anxiously counting the days that pass between one lung operation and the next: from time to time, the peacetime gets shorter. But what is worse, is that each time the disease is more explosive than it was at the beginning. Right from the start, Naruto coughs up large quantities of petals.

Then once, from the first cough, a bud makes its way into his throat.

It's like a dam. They tried to put a patch on it, but the more time passes the more the river gets bigger and the water becomes too much, each time breaking through their pathetic defense, which no matter how much they try from time to time to repair it, fix it, becomes more and more useless in front of it. to the strength of the current.

Their attempt is too weak in the face of the love that Naruto continues to feed.

But for now that's all they can do.

*

"We had to tell it to Kakashi-sensei" Sakura bites her lip.

From the hospital room where they are hidden they can see the gates of Konoha, the same gates that Naruto went out on a mission with a team that morning.

Sakura is not worried: she is scared.

Count the days since Orochimaru's last operation on the five fingers of his hands. The last time there was a detachment of just eight days before he started coughing again. She is afraid it will happen on a mission. She is afraid that the hanahaki will lower his defenses and put Naruto in danger.

"Yes, we should have done it."

Her eyes widen and her throat feels stung by a thousand pins.

Sasuke didn't have to agree with her. Sasuke had to reassure her that everything would be okay, to trust Naruto.

She gets up from her chair with a nervous jerk.

"We still have time to tell him" she suggests excitedly.

But Sasuke grabs her abruptly by the wrist when she tries to go.

"We promised him," he reminds her in a tired voice, his eyes sparkling with warning.

There is nothing more important between the three of them than a promise. The three of them are the fruit of a promise. They will never betray one, even at the cost of dying.

"Anyway, do not worry" he tries to calm her as she returns to sit on the table where they gathered. "I imprinted him with a seal and spoke to the Kyūbi: if something should happen to him, Kurama will hit the seal with his chakra warning me and I will just have to teleport us to where he is".

It's a simple fix and Sakura is grateful that Sasuke has thought of it. It barely reassures her, because if something happens they can intervene.

Cross her fingers under the table in silent prayer that is not necessary.

*

It had been a long time since Naruto left the village on a real mission. He had missed it a little and it would all be very nice if it weren't for the reason why they are doing it.

The war has generated too many madmen.

Madmen who worship Kaguya as a true deity, who have given way to a cult of her aimed at her return.

The Tsukiyomi Church immediately declared itself an enemy of the Ninja Alliance, found guilty of having prevented the coming of the Mother and the ascent to a pure world. Since it was formed it has been expelled from every nation, but it has never been a real nuisance: at first it was just a circle of fanatics whose only threat was brainwashing the population. Until S-rank nukenin, mostly mercenaries opposed to the attempt at peace, they decided to take advantage of its existence for their own purposes. With the excuse of recreating the Tsukiyomi, they resumed hunting the Bijū with the intention of using them as weapons.

The Alliance has begun to intervene, uncovering their hiding places and confronting them. Unfortunately, the organization of the Church into separate nuclei makes the whole process very long and often inconclusive.

Not that this stops them from continuing, far from it. As soon as they located their base in Fire Country they were sent to eliminate it. Especially this time they have the opportunity to put a real brake on the issue, since they will capture one of the main minds of the Church.

With him, Sai, Yamato and some chūnin believed they had more than enough firepower.

Unfortunately, they did not expect that base to be led by nukenin S with a truly disturbing innate ability.

 _A nuisance_ , Shikamaru would say.

Everything went as planned by Yamato's plan, they managed to force the two nukenin to exit by taking them close to a rocky wall, forcing them into a trap. At this point, even Naruto in Bijū mode would be enough to knock them out.

It would be enough, were it not for the innate abilities of the two nukenin who lead the group. One, a Kumo nukenin, is able to shrink to such a small size as to be invisible and imperceptible. The other, a deserter from Iwa, hardens his body with a layer of crystals so hard that not even Yamato's wood seems to scratch.

It would be enough, were it not for the flowers.

Naruto started coughing up petals as they ran through the trees when they were already out of Konoha, all just because he thought about how amazing a mission with Obito by his side would be.

He did not stop and continued the mission: _they are only petals_ , he said to himself.

But now he feels exhausted. He cannot have the right control over his chakra to be able to strike the Kumo-nukenin, nor are his rasengans focused and powerful enough to destroy the Iwa-nukenin barrier.

Although as foreseen by the plan, they continue to resist tenaciously and defend their Cardinal.

"Leave it to us, Naruto" Yamato orders when yet another bijūdama fails against the crystal layer of the Iwa-nukenin. "Take care of the other!"

"Roger" assures despite the frustration that devours him.

If there were no flowers in his heart to feed on both life, his chakra, his attacks would not be so weak.

Gritting his teeth he tries to vent his sense of helplessness against the other target, but the little asshole is reduced before he can hit him. Not even with Kurama's help he can perceive it, maybe he could with his natural chakra, but he doesn't feel fit enough to be able to attempt a kage bushin. It almost seems like a joke, that he just can't use it, but when it happens it seems that the clone is also affected by hanahaki and disappears after a few moments due to the flowers.

He might try collecting natural chakra himself, but to do so he needs time and a break from fighting. To obtain both, he has only one solution.

Talk no justu.

"Why are you doing all this ?!"

Although scaled down, there are some characteristics of the ninja that remain the same, such as strength and voice. Naruto struggles to restrain himself from the instinct to move towards where he hears it coming.

“Because Kaguya-sama is our Mother, we are her children. Is it so wrong to want to be reunited with one's Mother? "

"Bullshit" he growls, his eyes wandering all over the space looking for the slightest sign.

Fortunately, he has now become skilled enough at absorbing natural chakra to be able to afford these minimal movements or speak.

"Kaguya is a fucking alien who will absorb all the earth's chakra to destroy it!"

"The chakra belongs to her, it is she who gave it to us. We will be one with her again in a perfect world! "

Naruto doesn't know if he really thinks what he says, if he's brainwashed in the end, or if he's running a play. All he knows is that he is nauseous to hear these words, these ravings.

"That will be a pure illusion, the perfect world you are looking for can only be created with the collaboration and commitment of ..."

The sense of danger partially activates his bijū mode, a hand of pure chakra blocks him from the invisible blow that was coming. Unfortunately the kumo-nukenin vanished before he could clearly perceive it.

 _Fuck_.

Try to find him by following the cold laugh.

“I was told that Kyūbi no ko likes to chat,” he says derisively. “But do you think your words will be enough? We are not like that dirty traitor ... "

He feels cold, despite the warmth of natural energy that settles on him like a second skin, and he opens his eyes wide without being able to restrain himself.

"Who?" whispers.

They are not talking about _him_. They can't _dare_ to talk about _him_.

There is a pause and maybe Naruto has hinted too much even from that simple murmur, or maybe it's his expression, because when the kumo-nukenin answers his tone is provocative.

"The traitor Uchiha who gave up the perfect dream to rot like the insect he was, unable to complete his task ... that scum devoid of determination who turned his back on the Mother ... We will not fail!"

Naruto doesn't even listen to the last part, anger sets him on fire and seems to be a catalyst for the natural chakra. He feels the energy flowing throughout his body, mixing with his chakra and invigorating it. All his senses become even more acute and perceptive about what surrounds him, as he imagined that way he can perceive it. And it is against that little chakra flame that he perceives that he rejects all his anger.

"Don't you dare call it scum!"

Supported by the force of the natural chakra, the punch hitting the ground causes the same effect as Sakura's brute force, a crater opens on the rocky earth and explodes into debris.

But despite everything he failed to hit it, his only consolation is that he bruised it enough to have forced him back to his normal size. Naruto straightens up ready to finally kick his ass, to make him regret having spoken in that insulting way, for having spat on Obito's sacrifice ... but he feels _that pang_.

With the hypersensitive senses of senjutsu, Naruto can feel it clearly.

He can feel the beating of his heart racing with fear being suffocated by roots. He can really feel the presence of flowers in his body for the first time, like the foreign thing they are, like the enemy to fight. The lungs burn, the heart muscle screeches in an attempt to continue its duty and it hurts so much while oxygen decreases.

He finds himself on his knees coughing without realizing it, his throat swollen from everything that clutters it and he can't breathe. The cough has never been so strong and sudden, it seems to dig directly into the throat, tearing every alveolus. His eyes become wet as he brings his hands to his mouth, throat, and coughs in the only instinctive way his body knows to get rid of that disease.

It's only the years of constant training that saves him from the impending blow, but his dodge is weak and slow and he still feels the chakra burning in his side.

"Pathetic".

Amid the sobs and coughs, the derisive voice hardly reaches his ears. All he perceives is only the awareness that he is suffocating. The flowers, perhaps revitalized by the natural chakra, are more aggressive than ever.

I'm about to die, he realizes and realizes he is afraid of it.

This death seems much scarier than the one he has already experienced, where the shock of feeling deprived of Kurama's chakra had rendered him unconscious before he was aware of what was about to happen. But now he knows, he clearly feels how forced asphyxiation is slowly killing him.

He rolls to barely avoid another hit, the flowers climbing up his throat to finally bloom out of his body. The creepy images he saw in the Orochimaru scroll are burned into his mind.

"And this would be the hero of the ninja nations? You can't even stand up! "

The new blow hits him in the leg, he feels the ligaments tear and the pain paralyze the muscles. The blood drips while Kurama's instant regeneration cannot intervene, fully committed as he is to not collapsing his lungs.

"You're weak! You will never be able to thwart our perfect dream! "

Naruto clenches his fists, grinds his teeth.

A perfect dream ...

He remembers when he was a chubby twelve-year-old, when with his head down he would throw himself into the sure danger of not being able to die, because he would not die until he reached his dream.

 _I'm dying_.

_"Do you really think you can die?"_

Sakura's voice rings crystal clear in his mind, overpowering coughs and muffled gasps.

_“Jiraiya. Your father and your mother. Nagato and Konan. Neji and all the other shinobi who died for you. And not only them: also Tsunade, the Kage, the Bijū, Kakashi ... you made a promise to each of them. You promised that you would change the world and create peace. You also promised Obito! Do you want to renege on your promise? "_

_Never!_

The cough is unbearable, his ribs creak and his lungs burn from trying to endure the crushing, his heart is struggling more and more every second that passes. But he stands up. He joins his hands to his chest and manages to group a natural chakra barrier before the umpteenth blow can crush him. Even if it is the same chakra that is slowly consuming it from within, which nourishes the flowers. Even if holding him every second brings him closer to asphyxiation.

He will complete this mission. They will capture that Cardinal, they will cancel the Tsukiyomi Church and that nightmare will finally be over. He promised.

 _He promised it to Obito_.

He closes his eyes, the energy that leaves him once again, but he cannot collapse. In front of him, in the darkness of his closed eyes, he can see the image of Obito just before he died, his white back criss-crossed. He feels the same desperation as then and for a moment he feels like he has traveled through time, that he really sees that hopeful and grateful look.

_"Promise me you will become Hokage at any cost!"_

Sakura is right, if he dies he can't keep this promise. And that promise is no longer his only, that dream of becoming Hokage is supported by too many people who believed in him, who pushed him to follow him when he could not do anything alone. By now that dream is something bigger than him, he always said that he would never give up, but the truth and that he no longer has the right to give up for a long time.

He can sense the chakra getting closer, its owner still too small to be visible. By now he has exhausted all his strength, breathing is increasingly tiring. But he is not alone.

_Kurama ..._

**_I know._ **

With difficulty he holds the red chakra on his fingers, raises his hand to touch the skin behind the ear, where a seal of black ink still shines fresh.

He touches it.

The next second is too weak to stand up. He lets go of gravity, limbs dead, but someone stops his fall without force.

He smiles with narrowed eyes, as he watches Sakura gently place him on the ground and beside her Sasuke draw kusanagi.

"I'm sorry ..." he gasps hoarsely, a barely audible whisper in the spasms of his body.

"Don't even say it," Sakura replies.

Just one look at the battlefield is enough for them to immediately find the right agreement. Sakura jumps, the byakugō that expands from her forehead in sinuous lines of chakra and power, and lands in front of the Iwa-nukenin. Immediately she hits him with her fist, which scratches the crystal armor in a thousand splinters, without really breaking it.

Sasuke shields Naruto's body in search of that seemingly invisible opponent, immediately afterwards the sharingan rotates in the crimson iris allowing him to observe anything.

At the same time, a smile appears on the lips of both.

No matter how strong the Iwa-nukenin's shield may be, every weapon has a weak point of failure and Sakura has already found it. The armor starts from a precise point on his body, a sort of source, and then branches out along the body and encloses it. There is a place where the crystal winding closes, meeting two plates.

She sprints again, this time faster and more powerful than before, and with her knuckles she collides in that fragile spot, far from the source. She channels all her destructive chakra into that blow, so strong that the man is forced to bend on his knees, the ground beneath his feet collapses. The impact was so powerful not only that it broke all the bones of Sakura's arm - which she is already healing with her byakugō, ignoring the stinging pain - but that it disintegrated the armor that has so far protected the nukenin. The iwa-nin is not fast enough to recover from that blow, still in motion Sakura hits him with the neck of the ankle in the back of the head and throws him to the ground, unconscious.

Meanwhile, Sasuke manages to locate the kumo-nukenin before it, wisely, decides to escape. Unlike Sakura, he decides that the scum is not worth his effort. He confines himself to concentrating the chakra in the red eye, while this one rotates like a pinwheel until it transforms me into the figure of the Mangekyo.

"Burn" only whispers, malignant, while Amaterasu rises on the tiny, imperceptible body. But no matter its size, whether it is visible to the naked eye or not: the black flames will continue to burn until it is consumed.

Sakura returns to his side at the exact moment in which he sheaths Kusanagi - pulled out in vain - and when they turn to his companion they discover that Yamato and Sai have easily adapted to their appearance by taking advantage of it to capture the Cardinal. But they too barely glance at the old clergy, concentrating rather on the convulsions of the body lying on the ground. Small soft white flowers are cascading out of Naruto's mouth, with the petals arranged in a way that makes them look like cotton balls.

 _White clovers_ …, Sakura thinks feverishly as she crouches in an attempt to do something. But she knows that she can do nothing, that her treatment is useless in the face of this disease.

The flowers appear to be growing straight from Naruto's mouth, which he holds wide open like a fish out of the river.

"Sakura ..." is Sasuke's plea, more helpless than her.

"I'm trying," she says between her teeth, trying to remember the notes she has read of Orochimaru and his complex process.

But surprisingly, larger, calloused hands replace her, pulling them away from Naruto's chest.

"I'll do it" Yamato says with a confident, professional tone, the one he used when they were still inexperienced kids.

This is why Sakura almost reacts instinctively to withdraw her hands and let me be the captain. With wide eyes she watches Yamato as he moves his hands over Naruto's chest, pressing his skin and as if listening to his body.

"Sakura, I need you to make a clean, neat cut right here up to the rib cage, can you do that?" calls her back.

She nods in confusion. Of course she can do it, she already did it once during the war, when she made Naruto's heart beat by hand. The fingertips glow green as it begins to engrave, with its own chakra it prevents blood from escaping and keeps the cut clean as required by Yamato. Who sticks his fingers, in turn illuminated by chakra, holds them inside the wound for a few seconds, which to Sasuke seems like endless minutes, until Naruto has a gasp and a strong suck of air finally seems to pass through the lungs and the trachea. The breath is still weak, but he is breathing.

He started breathing again.

"But how…!" Sasuke bursts in disbelief as Yamato slips out his fingers and Sakura stitches up the cut with the chakra, returning the skin intact.

"I used the mokuton to control the growth of the flowers, they will remain paralyzed for a while," he explains in a calm voice, not at all impressed by what he saw. Quite the opposite of Sai, who for the first time since meeting him can see in the face of the ex-ANBU an expression of pure horror. She can't blame him, there are still those little clover flowers between Naruto's lips.

Yamato's gaze, on the other hand, is simply worried, but with the kind of resignation that war veterans have in front of a limb that can only be amputated.

"Hanahaki, huh?" murmurs shadowy. "Bad story. Really bad ".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By virtue of its bright color, the most typical meaning of the sunflower is that of cheerfulness, sunshine and liveliness.  
> Another meaning comes from its characteristic ability to follow the sun, and it is the desire to follow and stand by the side of a loved one.  
> In other traditions it is also given to express gratitude, respect and admiration.  
> But the meaning to which this chapter refers (devotional, obsessive love) comes from Roman Greek mythology. Ovid narrates in the Metamorphoses of a nymph named Clizia in love with the sun god Apollo, who followed his journeys on the chariot in the sky with his eyes. After nine days of observing the sun, however, she was transformed into this flower. Flower that orients its corolla towards the star just like the nymph Clizia did. So, if on the one hand the Sunflower stands as a symbol of deep attachment to another person, on the other, it can also imply an unrequited love. Depending on the circumstances, therefore, it can symbolize a real obsession.
> 
> The clover instead generally symbolizes fertility (for its ability to make the fields in which it grows fertile), but in its white color it takes on the meaning of promise. In this case he literally begins to grow inside Naruto due to his strong desire to keep the promise made to Obito and all the others.
> 
> And here we are! I'm sorry for the delay, as I said I had the end of summer exam session ...  
> Turning to this story, we are now running out. The attempt at repair has had its short fruits and is no longer enough. Not to mention that now both Yamato and Sai know what is going on (twist: Yamato knows the hanahaki).  
> In the next chapter there will be several revelations and ... well, a very difficult choice.  
> Thank you so much for the comments and the kudos, all very much appreciated!


	6. Veronica flowers

When Kakashi agreed to take the hat like Rokudaime, he also made a simple choice: to take it slow. He wasn't going to get stressed out just because he's the Hokage, since he was basically forced to become one, things could be done his way. So, no stress.

Just because it is now the Rokudaime is not going to get old all of a sudden, ruining their flawless skin in worry and anxiety wrinkles. He trusts his subordinates and knows he can behave like the usual Hatake Kakashi: shameful delays, lazy looks, little desire to do and a porn book always in hand during a meeting.

Vain hope.

Sure he has aged suddenly at least fifty years after what he heard, he asks slowly, giving anyone the opportunity to interrupt and contradict him:

"Are you telling me that one of my precious comrades is suffering from a deadly disease and you two haven't told anyone anything?"

Unfortunately, no one interrupts or contradicts him, and Sasuke and Sakura continue to look away in a clear admission of guilt. If the situation weren't so bad he could almost smile at how much they still look like those cute genin he enjoyed teasing in training.

But the situation is serious and at the moment he can hardly restrain himself from screaming.

"How many weeks?" she asks, forcing his voice to remain calm.

Sasuke insists not to look at him, even though his eyes flicker at his question. It is Sakura who responds hesitantly.

"Sensei ... it's been almost four months now."

Kakashi frowns in disbelief at that answer, it wasn't what he expected. Four months is a long time, hanahaki is a disease that never takes more than a month to consume its victim, it's almost a miracle that Naruto has lasted so long. He glances at the hospital door, behind which Naruto is in the hands of a medical team led by Tsunade. Then he turns to stare at Yamato, his eyes questioning.

Once the mission was over, they immediately returned to Konoha using the rinnegan's teleportation and took Naruto to the hospital while Sai reported everything to the Hokage. Kakashi made it to his team as soon as possible, and as long as Sakura admitted Naruto's condition, Yamato remained on the sidelines.

His expression is equally perplexed.

“Probably the Kyūbi chakra slowed the disease down,” he dared.

"Not only ..." Sakura admits and as soon as she speaks Sasuke gives her a warning look. But she ignores him, so it no longer makes sense to keep something hidden. “Orochimaru operated on his lungs, severing the roots in the alveoli. But we left those in the ventricles intact, because Naruto didn't want to ... "

Kakashi raises a hand interrupting her.

"Ah, so you told someone," he furiously costs. "To an S-class criminal held under lock and key by the Alliance!"

"Orochimaru was the only one who could tell me something," protests Sasuke.

"No! Orochimaru is the only one you asked for something! " corrects by raising his voice. "If you had come to me, or to Yamato ..."

"Tsunade-sama didn't believe me," Sakura whispers.

"... _we_ would have believed you!" Kakashi snaps.

He can't say more as the door to the room opens and reveals Tsunade.

Godaime looks tired, with her hair badly tied and her smocked gown.

"Yamato, can you come?" she asks sharply.

With a nod from Kakashi, the man joins her in the other room and Sasuke seems willing to do the same.

"Not so fast, Uchiha" Tsunade stops him pushing him on his chest. "You wait here".

Still, in another situation he would enjoy the indignant expression on his proudest student, but he just sighs in resignation.

"How is he, at least?" he asks.

"Bad" the woman answers directly. "We find our hands tied until he coughs, maybe Yamato will be able to help us."

"All right". He wearily rubs his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If he wakes up, let us know”.

Kakashi opens his eyes again when he hears the door close and finds Sakura staring at him hesitantly, curious.

"You are not surprised by the hanahaki ... and Yamato-taichu knew it" she murmurs.

Sakura's green eyes are shining with tears that she seems to be holding back for months, her hair is still matted and her dress dirty with the dust of the last fight. She is paler than Kakashi remembered, her lips chapped and chewed by nervousness and eyes stained with dark circles. Sasuke manages to hold back his concern better, but he is also a corpse, with a thinner face and lips folded down.

Seeing them in this state, Kakashi can no longer be angry - if he ever was with them - and only feels the familiar desire to reassure his precious students, to keep them away from the filth of their cruel world.

He reaches out to gently caress her head, ruffling her hair even more.

"Hanahaki has long been an S-class secret, known only to elite shinobi. Unfortunately for me I have been considered such since I was thirteen ”. Pause. "For this reason, what is happening to Naruto no one else must know, besides us present".

"But when I mentioned it to Tsunade-sama she didn't ..."

Kakashi sighs, interrupting her. “Knowing a secret is not the same as believing it. I didn't believe it either until I saw it ".

The question in Sakura's eyes is all too clear and reflected in Sasuke's gaze, who is discreetly approaching them. Kakashi, however, does not dare to touch him too, knowing full well that the Uchiha has always been a suspicious kitten not very used to physical contact.

"Yamato suffered from hanahaki when we were in the ANBU," he admits with a hint of guilt in revealing the other’s secret while he’s not there.

The surprise reaction is obvious, Sakura's clarification is unexpected anyway.

"But Yamato is alive".

"Of course, he reported his situation to Sandaime as soon as the first petals appeared and he immediately underwent the operation."

A sob leaves Sakura's lips.

"So he can't love anymore ..."

" _Romantically_ " Kakashi specifies sweetly. "He can still feel affection and love for his comrades and friends."

This doesn't seem to console the girl though, who now looks really sorry for her older teammate.

"And he doesn't remember anything about the person he loved ..."

He sighs and feels pain between his ribs.

"More or less. Yamato knows his ex-love, but he doesn't know he loved him and when they met after his surgery, that was their first meeting for him. "

Thank the mask that hides the bitter fold of his lips. It is still painful to be the only one to remember that the first time they met was in the basement of Root, not at the base of the regular ANBU, and that it was he who pushed him away from Danzō's clutches. The first months between him and his adorable kohai are now just a secret of Kakashi, yet another sense of guilt in front of his shortcoming. If only it hadn't been so broken as to return a love ...

"Sensei ..."

Sasuke's hesitant tone distracts him from his sad consideration and he is surprised that Sasuke finally decided to speak. He has closed in silence since they have been in the hospital.

"Why did it happen?" he asks and seems almost whipped to say it. "What did they have different from other unrequited loves? Why does Naruto suffer from hanahaki and others don't? "

"Oh, so Orochimaru didn't share all the secrets of hanahaki with you" he tries to joke, but gives up the attempt in front of Sasuke's murderous look.

He can't blame him, the situation is too tense to try to loosen it, it would just be out of place.

He crosses his arms and takes a breath before giving the answer.

"Hanahaki is a genetic disease of the Senjū clan," he explains. “Shodaime himself suffered from it and it was the main cause of his death. The flowers had absorbed all his energy from his Senjutsu and in the midst of a battle happened what happened to Naruto today happened. Except that there was no other user of the wood able to save him and he died suffocated by flowers ”.

Sakura frowns. "But Naruto is not a Senjū".

"You're right, it's a Uzumaki," he agrees. “But we all know that the Uzumaki have been related to the Senjū for generations. The mere fact that Naruto turned out to be Ashura's latest incarnation proves that he somehow has Senjū blood.”

"Orochimaru's cavy weren't Senjū," Sasuke objects.

She gives him an indulgent smile. “The Senjū clan hasn't existed for generations, weren't the Hokage themselves of the past telling you? In an attempt to integrate into the village, the clan broke up, joining other clans and thus expanding their genetics. The Senjū clan has become extinct, but its blood still flows in some shinobi and civilians of Fire Country. It was the Sandaime who decreed the hanahaki an S secret just as the clan was beginning to weaken. Furthermore, the only cure we know is the one that Nindaime found, the same one that Orochimaru still works on", he concluded.

"And is it really the only cure?" Sakura pleads.

"I am forced to say it, also because I fear that the only one who continued to investigate us was Orochimaru. With the passing of generations, the genetic heritage of the Senjū weakened and the Sandaime hoped that this curse would no longer present itself. After all, this has been the case for decades, the only exception was Yamato, which is itself an exception ... Each Clan has its curse of love: the Uchiha the sharingan, the Senjū the hanahaki ".

Sasuke nods, he does not know the story of his teammate well, but he knows that it is the result of a laboratory project aimed precisely to obtain the Shodaime mokuton. Above all, he knows the Uchiha love curse well.

"It doesn't make sense," he snaps though. “Why make such a dangerous and deadly disease secret? Especially when it risked hitting people outside the Senjū clan? "

Kakashi knows of the small grudge that Sasuke still feels for Sandaime, in his heart he holds him equally responsible for the slaughter of his family and the suffering of his brother. It is obvious that he instinctively contradicts every choice made by the old Hokage.

"Because it is a weakness" he replies. “This deadly disease is a profound weakness for the village, especially if it can kill a powerful shinobi like the Shodaime. Opponents could have tried to use it to conquer us, seducing the clan members and not returning their feelings. Moreover, already during the Third War Shinobi seemed to have disappeared from the village, so it was useless to alarm the citizens more than necessary. He was counting that if someone started coughing flowers they would immediately refer it to the Hokage. "

There is a subtle reproach in the last sentence that makes Sakura look down.

"He made us promise, sensei," she explains distraught. "We could not".

"I thought" sighs resigned.

He knows what Naruto is like, his stubbornness and his pushing himself to the limit. He knows even better the trust that exists between them, not even Ibiki's torture would have made them talk.

There is a little silence, where Sakura and Sasuke evaluate the new information with sadness. Knowing the truth doesn't change the situation much, it just makes everything even more real and fatalistic.

Kakashi lets them ruminate long enough, but then gets their attention with a long sigh.

"Therefore?" he asks trying to appear calm. "Who is?"

He had to bite his lip so as not to add _who is the piece of shit who rejected the love of my adorable little brother?_

The hesitant look his two former students exchange leaves him perplexed, in reality he wonders how the two didn't try to assassinate the person who is leading Naruto to death. Can understand Sakura, diplomatic and rational, but Sasuke?

He suspects he won't like the answer.

"It's Obito, sensei," Sakura finally murmurs.

It takes him many seconds to correctly record the information and he realizes that he accepts it without a fight, despite its absurdity. Despite the absurdity, it makes sense of all the times he found Naruto in front of the memorial tomb, of how he escaped from his office every time he talked about Obito and at the same time eagerly absorbed every word he had about him.

"Of course," he says to himself, sadly. "It's obvious".

And once again, always in front of the broken heart of one of his team mates, he regrets being the one who survived.

*

They remain in that room for hours without speaking, eaten up by the nervousness of waiting. Outside the sun goes down, but no one shows any signs of leaving. Even Kakashi hunted every ANBU and Jōnin who came looking for him in an attempt to remind him of his duties from Rokūdaime.

The team always comes first.

They wait and stay in the dark.

So when Tsunade comes out of the hospital room again, the first thing she does is turn on the light and everyone sprints in place, alert.

The Godaime lays her gaze on each of them, scrutinizing their pale, skinny faces with worry.

"He's alive," she says, answering the silent question that lightens in the air.

 _Not for long_ , she thinks.

Then Sasuke's eyes drop to the cloth he's holding in his hands. With a sigh, he shows the clusters of purple and indigo flowers all wrinkled.

“When he wakes up it's for a few seconds and it's to throw up these,” Tsunade explains. “Now he seems to have calmed down, but we don't know how long it will last. Both Yamato and I are at the limit ”.

"I understand," Kakashi murmurs. “Thanks for what you have done”.

"There is no need to say it," she states trembling, her hazel eyes burning with concern for her stupid blond boy.

Sakura approaches her and grabs the stem full of little flowers.

"They are flowers of Veronica" sadly recognizes and wonders who Naruto is offering his farewell to.

(Again she's afraid that she, Team 7, Konoha isn't enough to stop someone she loves from leaving them.)

Sasuke doesn't even ask if they can come in, he just does. Offering just another glimpse of the medinin, he marches through the door.

Inside there is a disgusting smell that makes his nose wrinkle: the typical smell of medicines is mixed with the sweetish one of withered or burnt flowers, with a pungent iron aftertaste.

Naruto is lying on the bed, awake, with tubes tucked up his nose. His eyes are black, sunken, he wasn't so pale from the battle in which they nearly killed themselves. Yet he shows no wounds, his skin is intact and free of bruises.

Between his fingers he has one of those flowers, he plays with it distractedly, caressing the corollas and the stem. When he turns to look at him he has such a desolate, lost expression ... defeated. Sasuke didn't believe it was really possible to defeat Naruto.

They don't need to talk. What he means is clear on his face and Sasuke is not so cruel as to turn the knife into the wound, to make him say that decision aloud.

After all, there is nothing else they can do.

"It'll be fine," he says and doesn't feel fake.

Naruto won't remember any of this from the last few months, and he won't remember having loved. If he does not remember, he cannot suffer and the pain he feels now will pass.

Don't suffer, that's the important thing now. He just wishes Naruto to stop suffering and live, because that same suffering he feels on his shoulders and cannot bear it.

"How are you?"

Kakashi's voice comes behind them casually, in that cheerful note that frustrates Sasuke's nerves every time.

"I've been better," Naruto concedes with a smile.

The moment of vulnerability was interrupted, he returned to his usual silly and cheerful expression. The blue eyes, however, fly to Sakura, who is checking the data that the machine it is connected to emits. Her lips are chewed up by nervousness and it seems that the only thing that can keep her from collapsing is slipping into the automatism of medical actions.

"Flower growth seems to have stopped," she says.

"For a while," Yamato replies, sitting on an exhausted corner. “We don't have more than a few hours”.

"It will be enough, the time to call Orochimaru and have him come here" Tsunade practical replies and snorts at Kakashi's annoyed expression: "He is the only one who knows the removal procedure correctly, he is the most suitable person".

Naruto is back lost, a child trapped among all those adults who talk. Sasuke would like to scream at them to shut up, because talking about Naruto's heart in that cool, practical way while he can hear them is cruel.

Naruto can no longer love.

 _Loving romantically_ , he forces himself to stress. Whatever happens in a few hours, it won't affect their bond. They will always be Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto and Sakura. Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke. They will always be them.

"Naruto," he calls, pushed by the urgency and when his blue eyes return to him, his throat feels dry, "nothing will change" he promises.

Sakura whirls around, in time to see Naruto's sad and unconvinced smile. She approaches in turn and grabs his hand hard.

"We will still be here," she says firmly. "Sasuke is right, nothing will change."

The hold seems to give greater conviction to Naruto, who reciprocates by rubbing the veronica flowers between their fingers.

But his voice still trembles when he asks:

"Will you tell me about him?" The eyes narrow. "You will, right?"

Kakashi is the first to react, leans over to place a hand on his shoulder, tempted to spread his arms and hug his three students together.

"We will," he promises. " _I will do it_. I'll tell you everything there is to know ".

Naruto nods and sniffles, a watery sound as watery as his ever-shining eyes.

"Okay," he says. "It'll be fine".

It would be more convincing if he just didn't cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flower of Veronica owes its name to San Veronica.  
> Its flowers have many healing qualities, in fact they are used to treat respiratory disorders. In tradition this flower is also known as Divine Eyes, due to the shape of the flower that resembles small blue eyes. Because of its blue color it is associated with the sky, while the meaning that is traditionally used is that referring to the word goodbye. Those who give it, in fact, hope that the divine eyes will watch over the journey of loved ones who are forced to leave.
> 
> And the penultimate chapter is gone too ;__; only the last one is missing, even if the direction that history has taken is now clear and you can all suspect what the next will concern. Pure pain.  
> I hope you liked the way I wanted to tie the hanahaki into Naruto's lore, his connection with the Senjū clan. Of course we all know that Hashirama started coughing up flowers after he believed he killed Madara :P Aaaand I hope you liked the little KakaYama insert too, kids çwç Maybe when I finish this story I'll do a little one-shot on Yamato's experience with the hanahaki, but do you think I should put the tag for this mention?
> 
> Thank you for the comments and for following the story up to this point <3 see you with the last chapter!


	7. Hingabana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They broke him. They broke Naruto.

Waking up with a headache is never a good sign, especially if when you open your eyes, the first thing you see is a hospital room.

 _What the hell_?

He blinks, feeling that his whole body - but especially the chest area - is hurting him. While it's not the typical pain he feels when being beaten by Sakura or Sasuke, it's more… like when you sleep too long in a weird position.

He takes a deep breath and a strong smell of oranges hits him in the nose. Curious turns his head to the side and sees Kakashi on a waiting chair, intent on peeling one of those orange fruits.

"Oh, you're awake," he comments cheerfully without looking up.

Puzzled to see the Rokudaime at his bedside - when he has no idea how he ended up in the hospital - he sits up looking for answers. But before he opens his mouth Kakashi is handing him a wedge of orange. He takes it hesitantly and when he brings it to his mouth he realizes he is starving.

_How long have I been here? Why am I here?_

"Kakashi-sensei ..." he asks swallowing the clove. "What happened?"

The man hums instead of replying, continuing to divide the orange in a meticulous job that makes him unnerving. He's about to blur something when he finally speaks.

"Naruto dear, do you know what day it is today?" Kakashi asks calmly.

He frowns at the strange question.

"The last date I remember is June sixteenth, sensei," he replies.

Kakashi nods satisfied and hands him the rest of the wedges.

"Great, Naruto, very well," he praises him. "See, today is the twenty-fifth of October".

The cheerful tone has totally misled him, so he understands what he actually said only when he already has an orange in his mouth and in surprise he finds himself spitting out the chewed slices.

"October?!" he repeats, choking.

Being in the hospital had he expected to be out of action for a few days, but even four months?

"What happened?" he asks again, more incisively and worried.

What happened that made him pass out for four months? And why does he remember absolutely nothing?

"Eat your orange, Naruto," Kakashi picks up unimpressed by his murderous gaze.

But he's always been an obedient guy in the end and stuffs all the remaining wedges into his mouth, puffing out his cheeks like a hamster.

"Then?" muttered barely understandable.

Kakashi nods.

"What is the last thing you remember?"

"You who enslave me in your office," he replies quickly. After all, that's what he did all summer when he wasn't on a mission.

"I do not enslave you" he protests. "I'm just teaching you how a future Hokage behaves, my sweet student."

Naruto looks at him wary, because if there is one thing he has understood after all those years it is that when Kakashi uses that sugary and carefree tone there is only to worry.

"Other?" asks the Rokudaime.

He frowns, trying to remember, but for some reason it's difficult.

"At the end of the day I accompanied you to the commemorative plaque, so I greeted my parents with you and ..."

The wrinkle on his forehead grows as he struggles, for sure there was someone else on that tombstone they were supposed to greet, but he just can't remember who. He knows no other name engraved besides his parents' and the same goes for Kakashi.

He shrugs his shoulders little worried, after all if he doesn't remember four months it is normal for him to get confused.

Kakashi waits to say more, but at the prolonged silence he nods to himself.

"Just like Tsunade said," he mutters.

"Because?" he now blurts out exasperated. "What happened to me?"

For a moment he fears he won't answer, but then Kakashi sighs and for the first time since he woke up he sees concern and sadness in his eyes.

"How do you feel?"

Naruto is very close to screaming.

"I'm fine," he says incisively, letting all his exasperation show in his face. "I'd be better off if you told me what I'm doing here, dattebayo!"

"Understandable" smiles at him, then lazily gets up from his chair. "There is a change of clothes in the bedside table. Put them on and join me outside the room. I'll explain everything to you on the way ”.

Naruto looks sulkily at him as he leaves, but then sighs in resignation and does as he says. Muscles and bones creak as he stands upright and for a moment he has a dizziness that forces him to lean against the wall.

He takes a long breath of air trying to get stable on his own legs.

But aside from this weakness, certainly caused by his being passed out for too long, he feels fine.

There is only a constant pang in the chest, which is unable to understand what exactly it comes from. It looks from the heart, but it's not as if the muscle is fatigued in contracting. No ... it's something different, similar to an awareness: there must be something but _something isn't there_.

It is similar to when he was thirteen and Sasuke had just left: he turned around sure to find Sasuke at his side and Sasuke was actually not there. It's the same kind of painful awareness that something is missing that should be there.

 _Kurama, what's going on?_ He asks alarmed in his own mind.

But the Fox doesn't seem to want to talk to him, he's holed up in a distant point of his mind nestled in his tails.

 ** _The scarecrow will tell you_** , it's the only grudgingly muttered explanation.

Naruto is sure he is going to go crazy and now he's really worried. Therefore, when he leaves the hospital room, he cannot help but ask first:

"Is Sasuke okay?"

Kakashi seems surprised by the momentum of his question, his lazy eyes look at him slightly confused.

"Never been so fit" reassures him.

But Naruto is not convinced, he is eaten by nervousness.

"Sakura then?"

“Healthy and beautiful as usual”.

"Sai?"

Kakashi now looks at him worried.

“What about Sai… the usual. He’s fine". He pauses where he studies it with apprehension. "We're _all_ fine, Naruto," she assures him.

He nods, even though his throat feels dry and his heart aches.

"What happened?" he asks again and, really, he is getting tired of repeating it.

Kakashi puts a hand on his shoulder and invites him to leave the hospital. Fortunately, he doesn't stay silent for too long.

“About a week ago, you were sent on a mission outside the village. Do you remember? "

Naruto frowns, forcing his memory to search for this memory. As he does so he purses his lips and buzzes with his throat.

"I think ... yes," he says uncertainly. He has a feeling of truth, he knows he was sent on a mission outside the village, but he doesn't remember it.

"If I say Tsukiyomi Church, will I help in any way?"

Naruto's gaze of shadow. "Yes," he growls, "it's the crazy ones who want to bring Kaguya back."

Kakashi nods. "Exactly. We found a main base here in Fire Country, you were sent with a team to capture their Cardinal. But…"

"Something went wrong" guess fatal, that _something went wrong_ must be the reason why he was in the hospital with no memory.

“The mission was a success” guarantees the Rokudaime, “but you were hit by a powerful unknown jutsu. Tsunade believed it might have affected your memory and, as you have shown, she was right. "

It is Naruto's turn to nod, pleased to have a clearer picture. Perhaps he should be worried about being hit by this unknown jutsu, but if he survived it's something he can handle.

“So, that's all?" he asks and narrows his eyes when Kakashi gives him an incredulous look.

Maybe he expected a less calm reaction to that, but it's really not a big deal. Whatever happened that summer, Sasuke and Sakura and everyone else can tell him. And if the mission was a success, there is really nothing to worry about. Every now and then he breaks an arm or a leg, this time he has a slight amnesia:they are shinobi _, it happens_.

“In reality we believe it has affected other memories as well… very specific” continues Kakashi, indicating the path they are following. "We're just going to check it out."

Finally paying attention to the area around him, Naruto recognizes the direction: they are going to the memorial. For some reason this discovery weighs down his heart and he feels nervous, so he goes the rest of the way in silence, wondering why of all the places they are going right there.

The monument is still the usual stone slab of names engraved at the training ground. As soon as they are there Naruto closes his eyes and bows his head in prayer towards his parents.

Kakashi is standing right beside him, his hands in his trouser pockets in his usual lazy pose.

"And so?" Naruto breaks the long silence.

Kakashi nods, as if remembering that they are here for a very specific reason.

"Among these people is my best friend," he says and, as much as Naruto feels sad for his sensei to discover this, he still does not understand what has to do with his memory.

"I'm sorry," he says anyway and touches him on the shoulder for comfort.

Kakashi makes a bitter expression, then shakes his head.

"What do you remember about the battle with Kaguya?"

Once again, the question takes him off guard and the desire to scream because he is no longer understanding anything grows stronger. But he trusts Kakashi, surely somehow twisted all of this must make sense, so he makes an effort.

“So… Kaguya transported us to a different dimension and I discovered I can fly” he begins. “Then Sasuke was really stupid with you and Sakura, but we managed to get him to reason. So I tried my ultimate phenomenal jutsu! " comes alive, only to chuckle nervously. "It didn't really work ... Kaguya changed dimensions and pushed Sasuke away from us, transferring him to another one. So to get him back we have… ”He stops as his voice fades.

He squints his eyes and sticks out his lower lip, in his classic and funny thoughtful expression. But after a handful of long seconds concentrated in that way he widens his eyes and returns to Kakashi hesitantly.

"I ... I don't remember how we did it," he admits. "And even after, when Kaguya transferred us to the dimension of gravity ... something happened there, didn't it?"

He feels terribly lost and for some reason his chest hurts, his heart feels too tight in the rib cage. He brings a hand to grab his shirt, as if to stop the accelerated heartbeat. Something happened there that he doesn't remember and for some reason thinking about it makes him want to cry.

Kakashi grabs him firmly, hands on his shoulders.

"Quiet, Naruto, everything is fine," he says in a warm, reassuring voice. “It's the jutsu, everything is fine. Come, let's sit down ”.

Naruto follows the sensei as he pushes him to sit on the lawn and at the same time tries to regulate his breathing, to let himself be calmed by Kakashi's soothing words.

Who waits to have calmed down before asking another question.

"Remember the fake Madara?"

A flash of anger and hatred passes over the blue eyes, darkening them.

"Yes" he growls, his body stiff at the memory.

"Great," Kakashi nods. "Do you also remember when you managed to break his mask?"

The flashbacks of that battle pass in his mind, along with the memory of the anger and frustration he felt in fighting against that individual who claimed to be nobody.

"Yes" he repeats in the same tone.

"Do you also remember who was behind that mask?"

Naruto opens his mouth and stiffens. As much as he can see the moment when he hit him in the face with the rasengan, shattering that hateful mask, the rest becomes empty and hazy as in memories with Kaguya.

"No ..." he murmurs confused.

Kakashi's resigned sigh only increases his concern. There is something wrong, something that makes his heart beat painfully in his chest. He doesn't understand why it hurts him so much, as if it had been opened by a scalpel, as if it were empty.

"I don't think there's an easy way to say it," Kakashi considers to himself, then looks back at the tomb. "Under the guise of Uchiha Madara, there was Uchiha Obito", a pause, "my best friend".

It is too much information for Naruto to be able to grasp it fully, it has so many meanings and implications that they risk making his brain break out due to the questions that arise almost autonomously.

He looks back at the tombstone, trying to put his head in order.

"That best friend there?" he asks. "But I don't understand, 'tebayo! Aren't those the dead of the Third War? What…"

He stops and squeezes his eyes, because he's really trying to remember and the harder he tries the more it hurts. But not in the head, as if it were a migraine, as if it were his brain that was blocked. What seems unable to open is the heart, it is what hurts in the effort to overcome the obstacle of pure emptiness.

Kakashi offers him his grip, firm and secure.

"Don't force yourself," he says. “It's the jutsu. The harder you try, the more it causes pain ”.

"Why don't I remember these things?" sobbing with shaky breath. He's trying to calm down, but he can't. How could he forget something so important? "Why can't I remember the Fourth War ?!"

“Breathe with me” Kakashi avoids his questions. “Follow my rhythm. Exhale, inhale, exhale ... "

Naruto tries to concentrate, to restrict the hum of his thoughts to just his own breath. If it's the jutsu, then he tries hard to think about something else. His mind flies easily to ramen, thinking that after all this shit he deserves a double encore.

Once again the ramen saves his life and he feels the blood return placid, stop boiling throughout his crazed body. He just nods to Kakashi to let him know that everything is fine.

"Why has jutsu affected precisely these memories?" he asks.

You can understand that he has erased the last few months from his mind, but why did he dent something so specific? Why did you choose the end of the Fourth War among all your memories?

Kakashi watches him in silence for a few seconds, his eyes alert and attentive to the slightest sign of weakness.

"We only have one theory" he begins slow, uncertain. “Probably their goal was to make you forget what would happen if the divine flower had blossomed, so as to eliminate your will to oppose them. But something went wrong, perhaps the presence of the Kyūbi had an influence, and instead they only removed some parts of the war. For example, who you were fighting against "

Naruto looks down, carefully considering this information. He understands the meaning, it is logical, so despite the pangs in the chest that continue to insist he nods.

"All right. I understood". He pauses, then looks at him hopefully. “Will they ever come back? My memories?"

Kakashi does not need to answer, the desolate expression in the gray irises is enough by itself.

"Oh".

He doesn't know how to feel about it. It's frustrating not to remember, to have this fog barrier, but at the same time… he doesn't remember. He doesn't miss it, he doesn't know what he's lost. Maybe that's why he felt that agonizing feeling when he woke up.

"I'll tell you how it went".

Kakashi's voice rouses him and he finds himself watching him bewildered. Her expressive eyes overflow with affection and determination.

"I'll tell you how you stopped Madara, Kaguya and ... how you changed Obito."

Tilt your head to the side, intrigued by the tone.

"Changed Obito?" repeats.

"You gave him back his identity," he explains. “You… you filled the hole in his heart, Naruto. _You_ did it ".

He does not understand these words and therefore repeats them in his mind, hoping that they can help him remember, but the only result is the magone that locks in his throat. Then he shakes his head and then spreads into a bright smile, already determined to leave this unpleasant situation behind. He's a shinobi, he'll survive that too.

“Over a cup of ramen? You pay?" offers slyly.

Kakashi snorts, like when they were sensei and genin.

"Maaa, if it cannot be avoided ..."

Sasuke looks gloomily from the branch, his eyes following the figures of Naruto and Kakashi leaving the training ground. Everything seems to have gone well, Naruto seems to have believed their articulate lie.

Ignoring the pain in his chest at that thought, he struggles to remember that they couldn't do otherwise. A few days ago, when Naruto woke up after the operation, he and Sakura tried to tell him the truth.

They broke him.

Naruto curled into himself clinging to his chest, crying and shivering with pain. Apparently, after the operation, any attempt to remember lost love would force the patient's heart to an unbearable effort, such as to overload and damage the chakra system. Sasuke had to use a genjutsu to calm him down.

They tried again, this time determined not to tell Naruto the truth, so they invented the memory jutsu and all. That didn't work either.

Naruto was there looking at them so fragile and Sasuke couldn't do it. He can't lie to Naruto, every fiber of his being would screech for something so unnatural. He has always been able to read it, he knows his heart, he knows when he lies. Naruto immediately realized that something was wrong and the same scene repeated itself once again. Sasuke put him to sleep with a genjutsu and Sakura destroyed a hospital room in frustration.

This time Kakashi seems to have succeeded. He managed to lie to Naruto, to stem any risk. Maybe that's right: after all he is their sensei, they are lost children who only know how to hurt themselves and find themselves.

Naruto will forgive them.

Naruto will forgive him if he can't, if the very idea of participating in that charade twists his guts. If the very idea of lying shamelessly, looking him in the eye and keeping quiet about what they did to him - _you can't fall in love anymore_ \- makes him want to burn everything. He knows it won't last long, that sooner or later it will explode to tell him the truth. Sasuke will hurt Naruto. Again.

He no longer looks at the two figures. He jumps between the various branches and roofs until he reaches the gates of Konoha.

Even though he hasn't warned anyone about trying to walk away without explaining, he's not surprised to find her sitting on one of those damn benches. It seems the replica of a memory that still makes him feel ashamed.

"You’re going away".

Sakura's is not a question, it is a resigned observation, as if by now she had accepted not to be able to hold him back. And despite his decision to leave secretly, without letting anyone know, he feels the need to justify himself to the sad green eyes.

"I can't stand it," he admits.

"I know".

"What we did to him is horrible."

"I know" she repeats again. "But it was the only way".

“He will never know. He'll never know what we took from him ”he insists, as if he wasn't listening to her.

"He agreed".

"But he didn't want to forget".

Sakura doesn't answer and they remain silent. Sasuke obsessively rethinks what he just saw: no reaction from Naruto to Obito's name, his eyes didn't have _that look_. That loving look, that emotion that vibrated in him and illuminated him despite the pain, will no longer be there. They tore it away, like a weed among the flowers.

They tore up the flowers.

"I can't stand it" he repeats softly, sweeter.

Their chakras are connected, the chakra that the Sage of the Six Paths has offered them continually calls their half. Sasuke feels the emptiness that has been carved into Naruto and if Naruto doesn't suffer it because he doesn't remember, because he doesn't understand, Sasuke does. He feels the consequences as if he had an open, bleeding wound in front of his eyes. He's selfish but he can't stand it, he needs to look away before nausea sets in.

Sasuke waits, until Sakura looks up at him again. She understands what he is waiting for and shakes her head.

"No" denies. "I won't ask you."

"Don't you want to come with me?" he asks and hopes that relief is not heard in his tone.

He needs to be alone, to process this thing. Loneliness is the only panacea he knows.

Sakura shakes her head, the helmet sways.

"I promised Naruto that I would be here when he wakes up," he says. “He needs me”.

"You can't fix him, Sakura" warns her. "We broke him."

The girl hums, avoiding the gaze and smiling sadly to herself.

"Maybe I'll find a solution ..." She gets up from the bench and seems to hesitate to ask: "If those flowers had been mine ..."

She doesn't finish the sentence and Sasuke feels bad. He looks at her and begs, his heart crushing with guilt, with the feeling of never being able to be enough for his companions.

She smiles and shakes her head, as if to chase away the words just said.

"You are right. Sorry, it was cruel ”.

He doesn't answer and Sakura doesn't even expect him to. She gives him one last smile, a wave of her hand before leaving.

"Have a good trip, Sasuke," he says. "Come back soon".

Sasuke watches her walk away down the street, the frame of her shoulders looking so thin in her red shirt despite her muscles. When did she get this tall?

"Sakura" calls her and doesn't even have to raise his voice for her to hear it.

She stops briefly and turns curiously in profile, waiting for him to say more.

"Next time," Sasuke says. “Next time I'll take you with me”.

He hears the echo of the little laugh reaching him.

"I count, Sas'ke-kun" she jokes in a sugary tone. Then she turns and walks away again, this time faster.

Sasuke doesn't stop her anymore, he takes one last look at Konoha - there, towards the point where he senses Naruto's chakra - and then turns around.

He has crossed this gate many times, but for the first time he imagines hands holding him by the shoulders. For the first time he feels he is giving up something.

 _I'll be back_ , they say. _I'll come back home_.

Sakura takes a few steps before turning to see Sasuke slip through the gate, a black figure that stands out in the colors of late autumn.

Who knows how many higanbana flowers have blossomed in the fields.

She only thinks about it for a second, a little melancholy. She's not mad at Sasuke, she gets it: she would run away too. But she can't do it, it's always been her job to put the pieces back together.

 _You can't fix him_ , Sasuke's words ring out.

Maybe that's true, but Naruto deserves to be loved even if he can't do it anymore. He deserves to have a family, someone to take care of him, someone he can believe he loves.

She hopes Naruto will forgive her for what she is about to do, but by now she has decided.

With one last look at Konoha's doors, she resumes walking in search of Hinata.

_You left me to die_ __  
I believed in love one day  
while petals hushed me.

**The end.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have understood my intention was to connect it to the canon anyway, maybe just before The Last (as much as that movie made me sick): Naruto has lost the ability to love romantically, but not to feel affection / sexual attraction, so I imagine Sakura convincing him that he has always been in love with Hinata (as happens in the film after all). Come on, that would also explain why he suddenly woke up like "OMG Hinata exists!" xD (I love Hinata and NaruHina, but I don't love how they ended up)  
> My headcanons aside, I hope you enjoyed this ending. Indeed, that you enjoyed the whole story has thrilled you! I certainly left a few tears in the course of writing xD  
> Thank you very much for following it to the end and if you would like to let me know what you think, in short, leave a comment, I would be really happy ^^  
> I also want to tell you in case you are interested, that I have a half idea of starting later on publishing an Omegaverse, where Obito after Rin's death decides to return to Konoha and after the massacre Uchiha takes care of Sasuke. It would be a canon rewrite with this What If ... and of course ObiNaru: D Tell me if you might like it!  
> Thanks again for the support you have given me, you are amazing! I love you


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